Reconstruction of an urban highway in NC named nation’s top transportation project
The overhaul of a freeway through downtown Winston-Salem was named the country’s top highway project this week by a national transportation organization.
The reconstruction of a 1.2-mile stretch of highway now known as Salem Parkway won the Grand Prize in the America’s Transportation Awards competition, put on by the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials, or AASHTO. The Winston-Salem project was one of 80 nominees from around the country.
The highway opened as the first leg of Interstate 40 in 1958. Later renamed I-40 Business, the road passed through a trench with gray concrete walls that separated the city’s main business district from Old Salem, historic Salem Cemetery and the West Salem neighborhood.
The N.C. Department of Transportation set out to rebuild the highway in 2006. Because the road sliced through through the heart of the city, NCDOT made extra efforts to work with the city and its residents on the design and construction.
The result is a highway that’s safer, more attractive and less obtrusive. The road is now lined with new brick and stone walls and crossed by two new pedestrian bridges that help reconnect the city — one with decorative arches, the other, called a “land bridge,” with beds for plants and trees along the path. Some of the 10 new bridges over the highway include bike lanes, and there’s room for a planned multi-use path that will eventually parallel the parkway from downtown west to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
The city and a local citizens group contributed $9.7 million toward the aesthetic touches and the pedestrian bridges.
In addition, NCDOT reduced the number of on and off ramps, reducing the exiting and merging that slowed traffic. As a result, the speed limit was increased from 45 mph to 55 mph.
NCDOT also agreed to the community’s request that it shut the road down to demolish and rebuild it, rather than try to keep it open and drag out the work for as long as six years. Contractors closed I-40 Business in November 2018 and reopened it as Salem Parkway in February 2020.
The parkway had already won a national award from the American Council of Engineering Companies in August.
“This project has gained a lot of national attention this year, and it’s not hard to see why,” Pat Ivey, the NCDOT Division 9 Engineer, said in a written statement. “This gateway into the heart of The City of Arts and Innovation is truly one of a kind, and the transportation industry has acknowledged this with the highest of recognitions. We can’t imagine a better end result.”
An independent panel of transportation industry judges chose the Salem Parkway for the Grand Prize, while another project received the highest number of online votes from the public to earn the People’s Choice Award. That prize went to the Kansas Department of Transportation for its reconstruction of a 60-year-old interchange in Kansas City that made it safer and less congested and opened up land for development.
Both prizes come with $10,000 for a charity or transportation-related scholarship of the winner’s choosing.
