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You are being way too kind. That was a monumental blunder which took them way too long to correct. Would have been a lot cheaper to do it right the first time. You're going to use a single lane to connect two six lane interstates?
That is my concern with the new ramp meter lights that will be installed on 540 West. I fear that it will take them forever to strike the balance between not letting track jam up on the ramp and keeping traffic moving on 540.
They'll make an adjustment. Then observe for a month. Then make an adjustment. Then observe for a month. Etc., etc.
But that's just the cynical me.
Yeah that was crazy. Goes back to wish that someone would just make a rule that says you have to have the same number of lanes in both directions. There were always 2 lanes coming from EB 40 to 540. Why the heck does it make sense to have only one lane for the other way? People don't just drive one way per day. There are some other instances of this insanity on 70 bypass to 40 and in Charlotte on I77. Though maybe the toll lane project will fix the 77 screw up.
And yeah I'm remains skeptical on the ramp meters.
I'm interested to see about the ramp meters too - I've seen them in other cities like Atlanta but I'll be interested to see what happens at an interchange like 540 & Falls of Neuse (and the impact on Falls of Neuse southbound from Bedford/Wake Forest in the AM).
Thanks for the tip. Filled it out and submitted it. Just wish they had included room to leave comments, such as why we're frustrated with the variable quality and slow pace of road construction in the state and wish the state would hold contractors more accountable for their work by penalizing them for their failures. The number of highway projects statewide that constantly finish over budget and past deadline--often by months or years--is staggering and disgusting to me.
What I-40 Exit 293 needs are c/d lanes. Cloverleaf interchanges don't work very well without them.
I wish I-40 Exits 270 and 276 would get diverging diamond interchanges. The former isn't too bad, but the latter is a hassle when the mall is busy
Then there's the tight cloverleaf interchange where US 15-501 intersects with NC 147
I-40 at NC 147 is also a problem spot
I-40 at US 1 has a C/D on 40 in both directions, and one for SB US 1. Should have had one for NB for sure, I don't have the history on that to know why not. An additional problem is that more traffic gets off onto 40 than goes through, so a majority of traffic is in the right-most lane. The plans for the upgrade will likely put traffic heading to WB 40 on the left and EB 40 on the right (US 1/440 NB in the middle) to try and balance the lanes. Typically, you want all exits on the right, but sometimes exceptions need to be made.
The 15-501/NC 147 has what has been described as "poor-man's C/D" in that a lane is added before and dropped after the ramps, so the weaving happens away from the through traffic. Is fine in theory and is OK when traffic volume is low, but when the road gets to/over capacity, like 40WB at 147, all it does is gives aggressive drivers a lane to bypass some traffic, and make it worse for everybody else. You won't see any more of those in NC.
I=40WB will get some help relatively soon as an auxiliary lane from the SB 147 on-ramp to NC 55 will be built.
Exit 270 US 15-501: The Durham side is to become a freeway, so the interchange will need to be modified. Not likely to be a DDI.
Exit 276: The Fayetteville interchange is a SPUI, which is the "forerunner" of the DDI (and a lot more expensive.) I thought about converting it to a DDI a while back, but it didn't function better.
Regarding other comments in this thread, the forecasted WB 540 at 40 WB traffic was lower when originally planned circa 1990, as Raleigh/Wake didn't have the dense zoning along 540 that ultimately came. DOT doesn't control/have a say about land uses, and has to limit construction to what's "justified" from the forecast. (See 485 in Charlotte, with the city/county saying there'd never be water/sewer south of 51. Then Ballentyne came along, and all that changed just before the first section was to be under construction. Given Federal environmental laws, the project could have been delayed by 3-4 years to provide more lanes, or build what had already been approved.)
So the traffic on the WB to WB ramp was roughly double the initial forecast when the next section (to NC 55 circa 2000) was about to be built. The traffic analysts saw the problem, but the designers said it wasn't "part of the scope of the project." (pierretong1991, as a traffic engineer, is probably familiar with this particular issue!) That, combined with less traffic staying on 540, resulted in the overloaded ramp. Definitely not a shining moment.
Regarding the balance of lanes at 40/540, the standard practice is to build any high-level flyover with two lanes, regardless of the traffic forecast. The reason is that it's very difficult to widen that bridge after the fact. The original forecast (without the housing boom in north Raleigh that resulted from the after-the-fact rezoning) indicated that a single lane would suffice. That's why there were two lanes EB and a single lane WB on those ramps.
Newer forecasts use travel demand models that have a projected land use component, so this doesn't happen as frequently as it did in the '80s and '90s.
Everyone remember that NC's 10 million residents are the 2nd most evenly spread in the country, Pennsylvania is number 1.
Charlotte has forever claimed it is short-changed and that Raleigh gets too much funding.
NC's highways are ALL maintained by NCDOT, over 80,000 miles worth, and that doesn't include city streets except for signed US, NC routes and of course, interstates.
Believe me, things could be much worse, such as they are here in Georgia.
E
Believe me, things could be much worse, such as they are here in Georgia.
I might be wrong buy if my memory serves me right the I-95 section through Georgia is by far the best. I hated traveling that section for many years while upgrades were done, but now it's the only State (Va-Fla) that has really upgraded I-95 ..... I-95 through NC is a joke and deathtrap
I-40 at US 1 has a C/D on 40 in both directions, and one for SB US 1. Should have had one for NB for sure, I don't have the history on that to know why not. An additional problem is that more traffic gets off onto 40 than goes through, so a majority of traffic is in the right-most lane. The plans for the upgrade will likely put traffic heading to WB 40 on the left and EB 40 on the right (US 1/440 NB in the middle) to try and balance the lanes. Typically, you want all exits on the right, but sometimes exceptions need to be made.
The 15-501/NC 147 has what has been described as "poor-man's C/D" in that a lane is added before and dropped after the ramps, so the weaving happens away from the through traffic. Is fine in theory and is OK when traffic volume is low, but when the road gets to/over capacity, like 40WB at 147, all it does is gives aggressive drivers a lane to bypass some traffic, and make it worse for everybody else. You won't see any more of those in NC.
I=40WB will get some help relatively soon as an auxiliary lane from the SB 147 on-ramp to NC 55 will be built.
Exit 270 US 15-501: The Durham side is to become a freeway, so the interchange will need to be modified. Not likely to be a DDI.
Exit 276: The Fayetteville interchange is a SPUI, which is the "forerunner" of the DDI (and a lot more expensive.) I thought about converting it to a DDI a while back, but it didn't function better.
Regarding other comments in this thread, the forecasted WB 540 at 40 WB traffic was lower when originally planned circa 1990, as Raleigh/Wake didn't have the dense zoning along 540 that ultimately came. DOT doesn't control/have a say about land uses, and has to limit construction to what's "justified" from the forecast. (See 485 in Charlotte, with the city/county saying there'd never be water/sewer south of 51. Then Ballentyne came along, and all that changed just before the first section was to be under construction. Given Federal environmental laws, the project could have been delayed by 3-4 years to provide more lanes, or build what had already been approved.)
So the traffic on the WB to WB ramp was roughly double the initial forecast when the next section (to NC 55 circa 2000) was about to be built. The traffic analysts saw the problem, but the designers said it wasn't "part of the scope of the project." (pierretong1991, as a traffic engineer, is probably familiar with this particular issue!) That, combined with less traffic staying on 540, resulted in the overloaded ramp. Definitely not a shining moment.
Regarding the balance of lanes at 40/540, the standard practice is to build any high-level flyover with two lanes, regardless of the traffic forecast. The reason is that it's very difficult to widen that bridge after the fact. The original forecast (without the housing boom in north Raleigh that resulted from the after-the-fact rezoning) indicated that a single lane would suffice. That's why there were two lanes EB and a single lane WB on those ramps.
Newer forecasts use travel demand models that have a projected land use component, so this doesn't happen as frequently as it did in the '80s and '90s.
Only issue I have with that is there were two lanes built originally in that direction. One went to EB 40 and one went to WB, but there were two lanes all the way from 540 to that split. When they continued the road across toward Davis, they revised it so there was only one lane exiting 540 which then split into the two, which is where the bottleneck really got bad. They then said that it wasn't feasible to rework due to all this dirt work and the lake etc. funny thing is gomlook at historical google earth photos and you see no expansion into the lake to make the change. I think they just screwed up.
Everyone remember that NC's 10 million residents are the 2nd most evenly spread in the country, Pennsylvania is number 1.
Charlotte has forever claimed it is short-changed and that Raleigh gets too much funding.
NC's highways are ALL maintained by NCDOT, over 80,000 miles worth, and that doesn't include city streets except for signed US, NC routes and of course, interstates.
Believe me, things could be much worse, such as they are here in Georgia.
I may be wrong but I think North Carolina has the largest state maintained highway system in the country. (not sure if we've passed Texas or not)
Only issue I have with that is there were two lanes built originally in that direction. One went to EB 40 and one went to WB, but there were two lanes all the way from 540 to that split. When they continued the road across toward Davis, they revised it so there was only one lane exiting 540 which then split into the two, which is where the bottleneck really got bad. They then said that it wasn't feasible to rework due to all this dirt work and the lake etc. funny thing is gomlook at historical google earth photos and you see no expansion into the lake to make the change. I think they just screwed up.
The EB section stubbed out where the C/D road exited, and there was only one lane heading to the C/D. In the early 2000s (it may have been a little before that), the local Division re-striped the road and used the shoulder so that two lanes exited. This work also provided a temporary ramp to Slater. The Slater ramp was removed when the EB 40 to EB 540 ramp was constructed. The shoulder lane was repaired (it was not originally built to hold traffic and was severely deteriorated) and returned as just a shoulder when the next section was completed to 55, reducing the exit to one lane, as the traffic was expected to stay on 540.
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