One of the Triangle's newest roads needs to be repaired. Here's why
WAKE COUNTY (WTVD) -- The new toll road that extends I-540 south to the 55 bypass isn't that old. The newest stretch opened almost exactly five years ago (on December 20, 2012). But already, crews are having to shore up certain sections.
The work was focused on the shoulder of the road. About a dozen workers, pumping grout (think concrete in liquid form) under the surface of the road to shore up a dip that had developed.
From Chopper 11 HD, you can see where the work was done: at the very tail end of the Expressway. The significance of that? It represents the newest stretch of the road.
"It's settling just a little bit, you know?" Alan Shapiro is the Roadway Manager for the NC Turnpike Authority. "You build a new house, you're going to get some creaks, you're going to get some settling. Doesn't mean the house wasn't built correctly. These aren't major repairs. These are routine things that happen across all roads."
Shapiro said they don't know exactly why the road is dipping, but they say it's routine and easy to fix.
"The maximum dip we've had out there is one inch," said Shapiro. "And you may not think one inch is a lot but when you are riding 70 miles an hour and you come across a very small one, you're going to feel that."
Shapiro said there were four dips that needed to be fixed; they waited until a few cropped up to call in a specialized crew whose only job is to fix roads by injecting grout.
Why don't they cut up the road and do it the old fashioned way? "It would be really expensive, really time consuming and it would impact traffic a lot more," Shapiro said.
