Blue Ridge Road interchange project pushed back

Construction won’t begin until 2025

Fred McCormick
The Valley Echo
September 1, 2020

Plans to convert the current grade separation at the I-40 overpass and Blue Ridge Road to an interchange have been delayed two years. The project is one of many impacted by a revenue shortfall in the N.C. Department of Transportation budget, which the department attributes to a significant decrease in travel related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fred McCormick

A major transportation project in Black Mountain slated for construction in 2023 has been delayed for two years.

The N..C. Department of Transportation is now scheduled to begin right-of-way acquisitions for the I-40 interchange at Blue Ridge Road in 2023 and plans to begin work on converting the current grade separation and widening the existing road near the overpass will start in 2025.

The state announced in April that it would delay all but 50 of its major projects that were scheduled to begin in the 2020-21 fiscal year due to a $300 million shortfall in the transportation budget. The department cited a significant decrease in travel, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as the cause of a sharp decline in revenue.

Plans for State Transportation Improvement Plan I-4409 include entrance and exit ramps to and from I-40, widening of Blue Ridge Road, north of the overpass, to U.S. 70, and a new bridge over the Swannanoa River. The project will also feature the development of a roundabout at the intersection of Blue Ridge Road and N.C. 9. 

The right of way acquisition process was originally set to begin in June of 2021.

The delay is one of 33 in the region represented by the French Broad Metropolitan Planning Organization, a partnership between state and local government that assists with transportation and planning in urbanized areas of Western North Carolina. The FBMPO anticipates delays, ranging from two to eight years, on projects in Buncombe, Haywood, Jackson and Henderson Counties.