Drivers face 2 months of detours as I-77 ‘whirlpool’ interchange reaches final stage
Starting Sunday night, drivers face two months of detours as the massive Interstate 77 and Interstate 40 “whirpool” interchange reaches its final stage in Statesville, state highway officials said Friday.
Construction of the $260-million interchange began in 2012 to replace a woefully outdated cloverleaf interchange built in the late 1960s. The old interchange “has outlived its original purpose,” N.C. Department of Transportation officials say on the I-40/I-77 interchange project page.
NCDOT expects to finish the interchange by year’s end, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.
At 7 p.m Sunday, NCDOT contract crews are scheduled to close the East Broad Street loop ramp so workers can build and tie in the new loop, according to an NCDOT news release.
A detour will be in place during the expected two months of construction, officials said.
Drivers will be detoured from I-77 South to U.S. 70 exit 49A and then back onto I-77 North.
The interchange, about 42 miles north of Charlotte, is a key component of North Carolina’s highway network because it links two of the most heavily traveled interstates crisscrossing the state.
About 70,000 drivers a day use the interchange, a number expected to leap to 110,000 a day by 2035, according to NCDOT.
How a whirlpool interchange works
The whirlpool interchange design spreads entrance and exit ramps much farther out than the former interchange. Vehicles from one interstate no longer spill into the lane used by others trying to access the other highway.
The design also typically eliminates left-lane exit ramps, highway officials said. Drivers use safer and longer right-lane exits and loop ramps.
Completion delayed
NCDOT intended to complete the project in late 2022, but delays pushed completion by another year, officials told the Observer last year.
Work has taken so long because of the many nearby bridge, ramp, road and other improvements involved in the project, officials said.
Crews completed the first half of the work in 2018, including 11 bridge, ramp, road and other improvements, according to a July 14 update on NCDOT.gov and an NCDOT spokesman.
The state widened I-40 from four to six lanes in each direction from Old Mocksville Road, just east of the I-40/I-77 interchange, to near N.C. 115 west of the interchange, according to NCDOT.
And highway workers transformed the nearby I-40/U.S. 21 interchange into a diverging diamond layout that’s also been shown to curtail bottlenecks and wrecks.
Crews completed about a dozen other projects, including reconstructing a stretch of U.S. 21, replacing or building several bridges and building several interstate ramps.
This story was originally published April 15, 2023 at 2:20 PM.