From Staff Reports

SKYLAND — The widening of Interstate 26 along the congested route from Ashevlle to Hendersonville cleared a major hurdle in mid-August, with some funding secured and construction scheduled to begin in 2020, according to local officials.

The aforementioned stretch of I-26 is one of Western North Carolina’s busiest roads.

The Federal Highway Administration approved the draft environmental impact statement for I-26 widening projects in Buncombe and Henderson counties. The statement was submitted by the N.C. Department of Transportation.

The 22.2-mile project is broken into two parts. Just the northern part, from N.C. 280 to I-40, has received funding. The southern section, from N.C. 280 to Asheville Highway, has not yet received funding. Construction work for the northern part is set to begin in 2020.

Proposed improvements include widening the existing freeway — from four lanes to eight lanes — to meet future travel demands for the I-26 corridor and to improve insufficient pavement structure and deteriorating road conditions.

Approval from the federal government allows NCDOT to begin a public review period for the statement and schedule public hearings near the proposed improvements.

At a Sept. 6 meeting of the Henderson County Board of Commissioners, Commissioner Grady Hawkins asked whether NCDOT plans to do any of the work at night.

“Yes, that’s one of the biggest concerns that we have working on any of our interstates, is maintaining traffic while we’re out there” doing maintenance or construction, according to Brian Burch,  Division 14 construction engineer for the N.C. Department of Transportation.

Burch added that plans for the I-26 widening project are to do bridge work initially and add lanes on the inside, then the outside, to keep two lanes of traffic open at all times during construction.

Next, a public hearing is set for 7 p.m. Oct. 13 at Biltmore Baptist Church in Arden, where NCDOT will present three alternative plans: to widen it to six lanes for the entirety of the project, to widen it to eight lanes for the project’s entirety, or to use a hybrid of both, Burch said, adding that the hybrid is the preferred approach.

A recently completed NCDOT study also calls for widening to six lanes a second section of I-26, from south of Fletcher to the interchange outside Flat Rock where U.S. 25 veers off toward Greenville, S.C.. However, the agency says it does not have money to do that until sometime after 2025.

Combined with other projects planned along the I-26 corridor, the work would create a wide channel for traffic to cut through the heart of WNC.

The plan is also designed to take the guesswork out calculating the time needed to make an afternoon trip to downtown Asheville from Biltmore Park, the commercial and residential development on Long Shoals Road, which could take 15 minutes — or 75 minutes. Traffic on the I-26 corridor often slows during the afternoon rush hour and at other times, with Friday afternoons being particularly congested.

NCDOT plans to make a final decision on how wide the road needs to be next spring.

In 2002, the agency was close to starting work on a wider I-26 when environmental groups sued to block that work, saying NCDOT had not done a comprehensive analysis of the total impact of improvements planned up and down the I-26 corridor, including the I-26 Connector project and adding lanes or making other changes to U.S. 19-23 in Asheville and Woodfin.

A key concern was the impact of additional traffic on air pollution — a major problem in the region at the time. A judge agreed with the groups in 2003 and NCDOT shelved the project for a decade for lack of funding.

Now, the state’s long-range plan contains money to widen I-26 between I-40 and the U.S. 25/Asheville Highway interchange to eight lanes, said John Williams, a DOT engineer working on the project. However, there is no money to add two lanes from there to Flat Rock. The current edition of the plan, now under revision, runs through 2025.

NCDOT is estimating the cost of the entire project at $454.7 million.