news-record.com

RALEIGH (MCT) — Work is starting on a project to open up the Triangle's worst rush-hour bottleneck — Interstate 40 in West Raleigh — and to remove the often-confusing "Inner" and "Outer" Beltline signs.

I-40, which is four lanes wide between Wade Avenue and U.S. 1/64 in Cary, will get 50 percent fatter as two new lanes are carved out of the wide, grassy median. Most construction will take place at night, and no lanes will be closed during the day.

Extra work to be performed at the same time will prepare the way for the six-lane freeway's inevitable expansion, years from now, to eight lanes. The N.C. Department of Transportation says it doesn't have enough money for the full eight-lane treatment now.

Meanwhile, Raleigh's Beltline will lose all signs that mark the clockwise lanes as "Inner" and the counterclockwise lanes as "Outer." In fact, all signs referring to the "Beltline" itself will go away, too.

Instead, the state DOT will divide our no-name circuit into two pieces, each to be identified by an interstate number:

• An eight-mile arc on the south side of town, no longer to be called the Southern Beltline, will be known by the signs that already label it as East and West I-40. I-440 signs will be removed from this stretch, between exits 293 and 301.
• The other 16 miles that curve through the west, north and east sides of Raleigh will be called East and West I-440.

I-40 is often clogged at rush hour as it carries 140,000 cars and trucks around West Raleigh each day. Commuters will notice some daytime work on the roadside and in the median, but lane closings will be allowed only after 9 p.m.

While expanding I-40 to six lanes, the DOT will add 12-foot shoulders that can be converted to traffic lanes in subsequent years. New bridges will be made wide enough to accommodate future expansion to eight lanes.

David B. Moore, a DOT engineer overseeing construction, said the 23-month project includes improvements that should alleviate confusion for eastbound commuters at the Wade Avenue exit.

Better signs will steer I-40 traffic to the three left lanes. Drivers entering the flow from nearby Harrison Avenue will have the option to head straight for Wade Avenue, without mingling with I-40 traffic.

S.T. Wooten Corp. of Wilson won the $49 million contract in a design-build competition -- but it was not the low bidder. Lane Construction Corp. of Cheshire, Conn., offered to do the work for $47.5 million.

The DOT usually designs a project and hires the low bidder to build it. But when design work is included in the contract, other factors are weighed along with the price.

Wooten overcame Lane's $1.5 million edge with a promise to finish the work nearly five months sooner -- in June 2011 instead of November 2011 -- and a plan to reduce disruptive truck traffic and lane closings.

Most construction will take place on the median. Normally, that would require closing the inner lanes frequently to make way for dump trucks and heavy machines that move slowly in and out of the work space.

Instead, Wooten will use elevated conveyor belts to move rocks and asphalt from the side of the highway to the median, passing over the heads of drivers. The DOT figures this will eliminate the need for about 12,000 truckload trips and more than 200 lane closings.

''Basically, that will make it safer for the driving public, too," Moore said, "because you're not having to stop or slow down for all those dump trucks."