The Durham East End Connector won’t open this year after all, NCDOT says
If you thought 2021 would be the year that the long-awaited Durham East End Connector highway opened to traffic, you’re in for another disappointment.
The N.C. Department of Transportation now says it will be next spring before drivers can use the new 1.25-mile highway between the Durham Freeway (N.C. 147) and U.S. 70.
In June, NCDOT said it expected to open the road by Christmas.
It all hinged, the department said, on the demolition of a temporary railroad bridge that crosses U.S. 70 near where it merges with the new section of highway. The bridge was built to carry CSX and Norfolk Southern trains over U.S. 70 while two parallel permanent bridges were demolished and replaced with ones that could accommodate the wider highway underneath.
The problem is that the concrete piers that hold up the temporary bridge are in the path of some of the lanes that lead to and from the new stretch of highway. Before those piers could come down, the railroads needed to finishing laying tracks on the new bridges over U.S. 70 and start using them.
Both railroads made the switch in the last few days, said NCDOT spokesman Marty Homan. A contractor is now “tentatively scheduled” to begin demolishing the detour bridge starting in mid-December, Homan said.
“It will take about six weeks to demolish the bridge, which puts us into late January or early February for the bridge to be gone,” he said.
Another set of contractors can then begin putting down the first layers of asphalt under the railroad bridges, Homan said, but the final layer and pavement markings can’t happen in cold weather. That’s why NCDOT won’t be any more precise about an opening date than “spring 2022.”
That’s more than seven years after Durham residents and local officials hailed the start of construction. At the time, NCDOT expected the road would be finished in 2019.
The completion date has now been pushed back at least four times, mostly related to the railroad bridges. The new bridges were supposed to be completed by the end of 2018, but various construction problems kept pushing that back, an NCDOT engineer said last winter.
The general contractor on the project, Dragados USA, could be financially penalized for the delays. NCDOT waits until a project is completed to determine how much of the delay could have been avoided and what could not. Dragados was awarded a $142 million contract for the project in 2015.
The East End Connector will link the Durham Freeway with Interstate 85. In addition to the new stretch of highway, the project entails converting about 2.75 miles of U.S. 70 to a freeway. When it opens, the highway stretching from I-85 south to I-40 near Research Triangle Park, including parts of the Durham Freeway, will become known as I-885.
Before the new section can open, NCDOT’s contractors will need to put down the final 1.5-inch layer of asphalt and the lane markings. Striping the road will be one of the final steps in the spring, Homan said.
“We don’t want people trying to drive on the connector until it’s open,” he said. “If we put markings down, the road may look open.”
This story was originally published November 2, 2021 at 4:54 PM.
