New bridge and exit ramp open this weekend at I-40 interchange with Aviation Parkway
Two years after construction began, a new exit ramp from Interstate 40 onto Aviation Parkway is set to open this weekend.
The new looping ramp will allow drivers to get from westbound I-40 onto southbound Aviation Parkway without making a left turn, as they do now. The current exit ramp will be used only by drivers making a right turn toward Raleigh-Durham International Airport.
To get to the new ramp, drivers will pass under the Aviation Parkway bridge and loop up to a new set of traffic lights.
The debut of the exit ramp coincides with the completion of a new bridge that carries Aviation Parkway over I-40. The N.C. Department of Transportation expects to shift traffic onto the new higher and longer bridge on Sunday afternoon.
Contractors will then begin demolishing the existing bridge, which will be replaced.
Also Sunday, the exit ramp from eastbound I-40 onto Aviation Parkway will reopen. It closed in mid-February so contractors could tie the ramp into the pavement at the south end of the new bridge. Drivers will also be able to again use the ramp from southbound Aviation Parkway onto eastbound I-40, avoiding the left turn put in place in February.
The rebuilding of the Aviation Parkway interchange is overlapping with the overhaul of the one at Airport Boulevard a mile west. That work recently got underway with the clearing of trees around the interchange. The Aviation Parkway project was supposed to be finished in September, but NCDOT says utility work has pushed that back to the summer of 2021.
The Aviation Parkway and Airport Boulevard bridges over the interstate were near the end of their useful lives, and NCDOT has taken the occasion to redesign both interchanges. In addition, the new bridges will be longer, to accommodate more lanes on I-40 should local transportation planners and the state ever want to widen it.
