Five months after Helene, I-40 reopens between NC and Tenn., but not like it was
Interstate 40 will open between North Carolina and Tennessee on Saturday for the first time since the remnants of Hurricane Helene destroyed sections of the highway in late September.
The flooding Pigeon River washed away more than a mile of the eastbound lanes on both sides of the state line. Now, transportation departments in both states have built a curb down the middle of the surviving westbound lanes and will open them to two-way traffic.
It will be slow going. The lanes are 11 feet wide, a foot narrower than the interstate standard, and with only a 9-by-9 inch concrete barrier and hard plastic bollards separating oncoming cars and trucks, the speed limit is 35 mph.
Altogether, there’s about 9 miles of two-way traffic on either side of the state line. In addition, there’s about 2 1/2 miles of one-lane traffic for non-Helene bridge construction a few miles from the gorge. Traffic will invariably back up at either end, as cars slow and merge from two lanes into one.
And with little or no shoulder on either side, there’s also a risk that a crash or broken down vehicle will bring traffic to a stop. Both states will step up their motorist assistance patrols and have tow trucks on call to try to clear blockages as quickly as possible. For the latest conditions, travelers can check drivenc.gov.
Still, the reopening is a milestone in the recovery from Helene. Before the storm, I-40 was the busiest connection between North Carolina and points west, handling 26,000 cars and trucks a day on average.
“It’s important for all of Western North Carolina to restore that access into Tennessee,” Joey Hopkins, the N.C. secretary of Transportation, said Wednesday.
Another factor that might slow travel through the gorge: people driving through just to see the damaged roadway. The N.C. Department of Transportation wants to discourage so-called disaster tourism, said Nathan Tanner, resident engineer for the region.
“This is a route we’re concerned about opening; we want it to be open for the economy of North Carolina,” Tanner said during a press conference in the gorge Thursday. “But we do not encourage drivers to come through here just to sightsee.”
Full reconstruction will take years
Still ahead is the daunting task of rebuilding the eastbound lanes and fully restoring I-40. The N.C. Department of Transportation estimates that just the North Carolina section will cost $1 billion and take two years.
Hopkins says that timeline depends on getting permission from the federal government to quarry stone from Pisgah National Forest near I-40. That would allow NCDOT and its contractors to bring in the tons of material needed to rebuild the missing sections of road without putting trucks on the highway to haul it from an existing quarry.
“The shortest place is in Tennessee, over 22 miles away,” he said. “So we’ll have to put thousands of dump trucks on I-40 in a two-way pattern with everybody else.”
If that’s the case, Hopkins said, “you could add two, maybe three years onto that timeframe.”
Either way, I-40 will be a busy construction zone through the Pigeon River Gorge for the foreseeable future, Tanner said.
“I don’t want to discourage people from coming through I-40,” he said. “I just want them to be aware of the current roadway conditions and what kind of traffic delays they can expect.”
NCDOT had hoped to shore up the remaining eastbound lanes of I-40 and reopen the highway to two-way traffic by the first week of 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.
I-40 is one of two interstate connections between North Carolina and Tennessee. The other, I-26, was also closed by Helene, after twin bridge spans over the Nolichucky River collapsed in Erwin, Tennessee. The Tennessee Department of Transportation built a temporary causeway to reopen the road to two-way traffic in late October, while permanent repairs are made.
This story was originally published February 27, 2025 at 4:14 PM with the headline "Five months after Helene, I-40 reopens between NC and Tenn., but not like it was."
