NCDOT sets new date for reopening I-40 in Western North Carolina after Helene
Interstate 40 will reopen through the Pigeon River Gorge on March 1, restoring the main highway connection between North Carolina and Tennessee for the first time since damage from remnants of Hurricane Helene shut it down.
Gov. Josh Stein announced the reopening Monday a few yards from where a section of highway collapsed into the river. Stein and members of the state’s congressional delegation were in the gorge to meet with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, who saw the damaged interstate in person for the first time.
More than a mile of the eastbound lanes of I-40 were washed away by the swollen river in North Carolina. When the road reopens, traffic will be confined to a single lane in each direction on the westbound side. The lanes will be 11 feet wide, a foot narrower than the interstate standard, so the speed limit will be 40 mph.
“At least it will start the process of reconnecting North Carolina with the rest of the country,” Stein said.
Since shortly after the storm, contractors have worked to stabilize what’s left of the highway through a process called “soil nailing.” They drive long steel rods into bedrock below the road, fill them with grout that adheres to the rock and then spray concrete on the cliff face to hold the rods in place and create a solid wall.
That work was expected to be done by the end of December, allowing NCDOT to open the westbound lanes the first week in January. But another chunk of the highway fell into the river the week before Christmas, forcing a delay while contractors made sure all the vulnerable sections were secure.
The delay was necessary, Duffy told reporters at the site on Monday.
“You’re not going to open up a roadway that’s not safe, and I think that’s the consideration that caused the delay,” he said. “I think everyone here would agree that safety is paramount.”
Duffy is the second U.S. Transportation Secretary to visit the gorge since the storm; his predecessor, Pete Buttigieg, came to see the highway in October and to pledge enough federal support that “funding is not a barrier” to rebuilding.
Duffy echoed that sentiment.
“The president has indicated he is fully supportive of the rebuild. Our department is as well,” he said. “I think you’re going to have the resources necessary to help you make sure you’re made whole after this disaster.”
Rebuilding will take $1 billion and lots of rock
The N.C. Department of Transportation has estimated it will cost $5 billion to repair and rebuild roads and bridges damaged by Helene; the four-mile stretch of I-40 accounts for $1 billion of that. Several sections of the eastbound lanes also gave way on the Tennessee side of the state line.
NCDOT and its contractors are still fine-tuning their strategy for rebuilding I-40, but they will likely restore missing sections with bridges or fill behind concrete walls. An early step will be building a stone causeway alongside the river to give contractors access to what is now as much as a 50-foot cliff face in many places.
To get the tons of rock needed to build that causeway and restore missing sections of the road, NCDOT has begun talking with the U.S. Forest Service about mining it on land it controls around the highway, said N.C. Transportation Secretary Joey Hopkins.
It would be cheaper and easier to get the rock locally, Hopkins said, than from the nearest quarry, which is more than 20 miles away in Tennessee. It may also keep thousands of dump trucks off the two-lane section of I-40 that’s expected to open March 1.
“They’re receptive to the concept,” Hopkins said of the Forest Service. “They’re at the table talking to us, and they’ve actually identified some sites that they would consider for us to mine from. So we’re going to pursue that further.”
Duffy said his department has been speaking with the Forest Service about streamlining the approval process for mining for I-40.
“If we can get permitting for that rock, it will be way cheaper and the project will get rebuilt way faster,” he said.
NCDOT is still negotiating with its contractors over how long it will take to fully reopen I-40 through the gorge, but it has set a tentative date of May 2027.
This story was originally published February 10, 2025 at 2:53 PM with the headline "NCDOT sets new date for reopening I-40 in Western North Carolina after Helene."
