I-40 interchange near RDU airport will be transformed this weekend. But first, detours.
Airport Boulevard will be closed where it crosses Interstate 40 this weekend, and when the interchange reopens Monday morning, it will look and feel very different.
Contractors for the N.C. Department of Transportation will convert the interchange into a diverging diamond, a counter-intuitive but increasingly common pattern designed to reduce crashes and move traffic more smoothly.
Come Monday, drivers on Airport Boulevard will crisscross at either end of the bridges over the highway in a way that reduces the amount of time they spend sitting at red lights and eliminates left turns across traffic.
Airport Boulevard will be the fifth diverging diamond that the N.C. Department of Transportation has built in the Triangle.
NCDOT introduced the pattern in the region in late 2021 where Western Boulevard meets the Raleigh Beltline, as part of a larger overhaul of the highway that’s still underway. It has since been put in place at Jones Sausage Road and I-40, at Holly Springs Road and N.C. 540/the Triangle Expressway and at N.C. 42 and I-40 in Johnston County.
Barring an unexpected turn in the weather, contractors will close Airport Boulevard across I-40 at 10 p.m. Friday, March 7. All right turns on or off the highway ramps will remain open.
The road is expected to reopen in its new pattern by 5 a.m. Monday.
Through the weekend, drivers wishing to cross I-40 northbound on Airport Boulevard will be detoured onto eastbound I-40 to Aviation Parkway and then back again on westbound I-40. Southbound traffic on Airport Boulevard will be directed on a similar detour onto westbound I-40 to I-540 and then back again.
People driving to or from Raleigh-Durham International Airport from I-40 are encouraged to use Aviation Parkway.
This story was originally published March 6, 2025 at 4:29 PM.
