I-540 to be squeezed to repair bad concrete

RALEIGH -- Unless stormy weather spoils its plans again, state Department of Transportation engineers will squeeze westbound traffic on the Interstate 540 Outer Loop into one lane this weekend so a contractor can fix two lanes of bad concrete.

The traffic squeeze affects drivers heading west from U.S. 64 Business (New Bern Road) to Buffaloe Road in northeast Raleigh all weekend, until 6 a.m. Monday. This weekend, road crews will replace the entire 12-inch-deep concrete slab for a 500-foot distance in the center and outer lanes.

Vecellio & Grogan is the contractor responsible for the 9-mile Outer Loop arc from U.S. 1 in North Raleigh to U.S. 64 in Knightdale, which opened in January 2007.

Cadmus Capehart, the DOT engineer overseeing the project, says some of the pavement is honeycombed with air gaps. The mix of cement, rocks and water apparently did not combine smoothly and uniformly before the concrete was poured onto the roadbed.

This is the second weekend of work, and one or two more weekends will be needed to finish the job. In total, the repairs will cover parts of two lanes running 2,200 feet, mostly in the outer westbound lanes but some in the inner eastbound lanes.

The problem is less extensive than DOT's botched concrete paving job on Interstate 40 in Durham County in 2003, which covered two lanes in each direction for 10 miles. That blunder cost taxpayers $21.7 million and plenty of headaches in 2006 and 2007.

The I-540 fix will inconvenience drivers for a few weekends, but the money will come from the contractor's pocket.