Wade Avenue ramp closure at the Beltline will detour drivers starting Friday night
Drivers who come into Raleigh on Wade Avenue and get on the Beltline headed toward Crabtree Valley and North Raleigh will face a detour in the coming days.
The loop ramp that carries drivers from eastbound Wade onto eastbound Interstate 440 will close at 9 p.m. Friday, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation. The ramp is scheduled to reopen in a slightly different configuration on Tuesday at 8 p.m.
In the meantime, drivers will be directed on a detour that takes them onto Faircloth Street over to Hillsborough Street and back out to the Beltline.
In addition, the Exit 4 ramp from eastbound I-440 to Wade Avenue will also be closed from 5 a.m. Monday until 8 p.m. Tuesday. Drivers will be directed to the Lake Boone Trail exit to either turn around and take I-440 back to westbound Wade Avenue or to drive up to Blue Ridge Road to get back to eastbound Wade.
The temporary closures are part of the multi-year effort to rebuild the Wade Avenue interchange with the Beltline. The loop ramp is being realigned to make room for supports of a new bridge that will eventually carry eastbound I-440 traffic onto westbound Wade Avenue.
The realigned loop will itself be temporary. NCDOT expects it will be used for about 13 months, while crews finish a new ramp that will branch off the left side of eastbound Wade Avenue and under a new outbound Wade bridge on to the Beltline.
When that opens, the tight loop ramp, which often gets backed up, will close for good.
The new interchange at Wade Avenue is part of a broader effort to rebuild a four-mile stretch of the Beltine from Wade to Interstate 40. In addition to widening the highway from four lanes to six, NCDOT is reconfiguring the interchanges at Hillsborough Street, Western Boulevard and Jones Franklin Road. Work began in the summer of 2019 and is expected to take four years to complete.
