DOT's error on I-795 charged to counties

tool name

tool name

I-795 repair will cost $13 million

It turns out Wendi Johnson, a Wilson-based construction engineer for the state Department of Transportation, was right all along: The central office experts skimped on their design for a new interstate highway for Eastern North Carolina.

So the state will spend $13 million to repair damage caused by their mistake and to implement a recommendation Johnson made six years ago, a DOT administrator said Thursday.

In 2003 and 2004, Johnson urged DOT honchos in Raleigh not to scrimp on the thickness of pavement when they built Interstate 795, an 18-mile route from Goldsboro to I-95 at Wilson. Citing her experience with pavement problems on other roads in Eastern North Carolina, Johnson warned that DOT's planned 5-inch pavement would be too thin and too weak to support the expected traffic.

Botched paving to cost state $13 million

It turns out that Wendi Johnson, a Wilson-based construction engineer for the state Department of Transportation, was right all along. And the central office experts were wrong.

North Carolina will spend $13 million to correct their mistake, DOT officials said today, and to implement a recommendation Johnson made six years ago.

In 2003 and 2004, Johnson urged DOT honchos in Raleigh not to scrimp on the thickness of pavement for the new 18-mile Interstate 795, a truck shortcut from Goldsboro to I-95 at Wilson.

I-40 fix will tax budget, patience

The new concrete pavement on Interstate 40 in Durham County was supposed to be good for 30 years, but it went bad fast.

Now, after a year of patching the most dangerous cracks and potholes, the state Department of Transportation is preparing to rip out the bad concrete. All of it.

State officials wouldn't talk Thursday about the details, but it became clear this week that fixing DOT's paving mistakes on I-40 would cost more, take more time and tie up more traffic than they had hoped.

State weighs paying for $21 million I-40 fiasco

North Carolina leaders still haven't agreed on how the state should pay for a $21.7 million repair job that got under way last month on Interstate 40 in Durham County.

Engineers and administrators at the state Department of Transportation were blamed for a blunder that paving crews will be fixing on nights and weekends until May 2008.

DOT counts the repairs as a cost overrun on a recent I-40 widening project. It plans to pay for its mistakes by taking money from other road projects in Durham, Wake and five other counties in its Division Five.

DOT will limit I-40 repair schedule

Repairs on Interstate 40 in Durham County will start again in April and could last until July 2008, but engineers say they will spare weekday commuters the endless traffic jams they endured when I-40 was widened a few years ago.

The construction, the lane closings and the suffering will be limited to nights and some weekends.

"It will be much different from the original project, where you had the concrete median barriers out there day and night," Wally Bowman, who oversees Department of Transportation work in Durham and six other counties, said Wednesday.