After years of construction, new Wake County highway goes quiet before it opens

“Pristine” is not a word normally used to describe a six-lane highway, but there are parts of the Triangle Expressway these days where it just might fit.

The 18-mile extension of N.C. 540 across southern Wake County will open this summer, and some sections of the road are already finished. The lane markings gleam white, and the pavement is dark and free of skid marks, bits of tire tread and oil streaks that will inevitably mar it. The only traffic is the occasional pickup or SUV moving from one of the remaining construction hot spots to another.

This new section of the Triangle Expressway will extend the toll road from N.C. 55 in Apex to a new massive interchange where it meets Interstate 40 and U.S. 70 at the Johnston County line. In between will be five new interchanges in a once-rural part of the county that is developing fast.

The new highway is set to open in late July or early August, with one exception. A temporary asphalt plant will remain at the Bells Lake Road interchange through the summer, delaying the opening of the exit and entrance ramps for eastbound N.C. 540 until November.

The 18 miles of new highway is the first of a two-phase effort to complete the 540 Outer Loop around Raleigh. Construction has just begun on the final phase, which will extend the toll road 10 miles from I-40 up to I-87 in Knightdale. It’s expected to open sometime in 2028.

NCDOT’s most expensive single project

At an estimated cost of $2.5 billion, these 28 miles of the Triangle Expressway are the most expensive single project the N.C. Department of Transportation has ever undertaken.

NCDOT broke the project into smaller bits to make it easier for more contractors to get involved. That’s why drivers will notice that a little more than half of the 18-mile highway that opens this summer will be asphalt, while the rest will be made of concrete, says Dennis Jernigan, who just retired as the deputy chief engineer for the N.C. Turnpike Authority, an arm of NCDOT that builds and operates toll roads in the state.

“A lot of it has to do with what the contractors are comfortable with, what they usually pave with,” Jernigan said as he drove on fresh asphalt in late May.

Drivers with an NC Quick Pass transponder in their car will pay $8.01 to drive the length of the Triangle Expressway from Research Triangle Park south and east to I-40. Drivers without Quick Pass will pay 35% higher rates and receive a bill in the mail. Gantries over the highway hold cameras and sensors that either read the Quick Pass or photograph the license plates of cars passing underneath.

That the southern half of 540 is a toll road, while the northern half is free, has been a sore point with many drivers. It goes back to a decision local officials made 20 years ago to ask the Turnpike Authority to build the southern half with toll revenue when it appeared the state wouldn’t have enough money for many years.

“It’s either toll road or no road,” is how former Fuquay-Varina Mayor John Byrne put it at the 2019 groundbreaking for the section that’s about to open.

Numbers help tell the story of a highway

Here are a few more ways to measure the stretch of road that drivers will use for the first time this summer:

5: New interchanges, at Holly Springs Road, Bells Lake Road, Fayetteville Road (U.S. 401), Old Stage Road and Benson Road (N.C. 50).

650: Different properties that NCDOT had to buy in part or in full, ranging from the size of a pickleball court to dozens of acres.

135: Houses taken and demolished; 20% of them were in a single mobile home park.

481: Acres of the turbine-style interchange where N.C. 540, I-40 and U.S. 70 will meet in southern Wake County.

650,000: Tons of asphalt used to pave the western 9.4 miles of the highway.

350,000: Square yards of concrete used to pave the eastern 8.6 miles.

12: Width in feet of each of the three travel lanes and each paved shoulder.

350: Minimum width in feet of the highway right-of-way. It’s wider in spots, including at the interchanges.

70: Width in feet of the median. It will have cable or metal guard rails. But there’s room to add one additional lane on either side, with a concrete barrier in between, so the road can be widened someday within its current footprint.

14.7: Miles of noise walls lining the highway in front of established residential neighborhoods. They’re made out of about 4 million bricks.

52: Bridges, both on the road and over it, including 13 in the big interchange with I-40 and U.S. 70. There are also 33 culverts.

$10 million: Budget for landscaping. Trees, bushes and other greenery will be planted at interchanges and other places along the highway starting in the fall.