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Posted: February 6, 2007

Commuters May Soon Get Relief From I-540 Bottleneck

Raleigh, N.C. — An part of Interstate 540 has drawn the ire of commuters. The state Department of Transportation has heard the complaints and officials said they plan to address it sooner rather than later.

Motorists have complained that Interstate 540 squeezes down to one lane as it connects with I-40, causing a traffic bottleneck during the morning commute.

DOT crews are working to connect Interstate 540 to Highway 54 since many of those drivers currently use I-40 to enter Research Triangle Park. DOT officials hope the new roadway would ease traffic congestion in the area.

Contractors hope to have the project completed by May 2007. The project was originally slated for completion in August 2007, but due to the high volume of complaints from motorists, officials said they will try to extend the roadway sooner.

Reporter: Mark Roberts
Photographer: Richard Adkins
Web Editor: Kamal Wallace

RELATED TOPICS: Durham County, Research Triangle, Durham

12 Comments

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Latest Comments

Good point about the lane crashers. It would also help if the state posted a few troopers every morning to ticket the BMW's and Saabs and Hummers that do crash over the solid white lane at the last minute. It always seems to be the wealthy, self-important business folk. No shortage in RTP I guess. Lucky us. Don't suppose a half-mile of those flexi-poles would make any difference, protecting that last stretch of merge from the crashers? Probably just crash before the first pole, but it's worth a shot, especially if the first pole is a fat concrete barricade they can wrap their $70k cars around.

kevboom
February 6, 2007 6:52 p.m.

It would help if people know that they are going west on 40 to merge before they get to the bottleneck and not race on the outside then cut in front of everyone causing people to hit their brakes...of course that would help all over Raleigh but everyone thinks they are so great at driving or so damn important, they fail to be courteous...Im aware this is asking for a miracle with all the traffic we have...of course you could leave home earlier but that would crimp the style of the great IBM folks since they are so important...have a nice day

golfdoc33
February 6, 2007 6:16 p.m.

Whatever happened to the monorail. Sigh.

DontBelieveTheHype
February 6, 2007 5:24 p.m.

ya know...having to drive this route monday-friday...if people would merge over earlier instead of the last minute, there wouldn't be a problem... but, yeah, if the road was finished...that would be awesome too...this part of 540 should have opened before the part past capital to 64...it really sucks now!

Curegrrl
February 6, 2007 3:56 p.m.

...last week I couldn't spell engine-ar, and now I 'are' one!.... c'mon NCDOT, get a clue... this is not rocket science!