By car, especially in and around the peak commuter travel times along U.S. Highway 52, Salem Parkway and Interstate 40 in Winston-Salem, N.C., progress on the region's much-anticipated Northern Beltway project can be difficult to discern.
Wide stands of tall hardwoods, smaller trees and undergrowth have long been removed. In addition, excavation has carved or carried away huge swaths of red earth near Rural Hall, a small community north of Winston-Salem. The same is true near Baux Mountain Road in the northeastern part of the city.
Farther to the south and east, along a 25-year-old highway still referred to as "new" I-40, the single most expensive road project in Forsyth County history has another piece of construction under way, too.
In total, the 34.5-mi.-long, $1.7 billion Northern Beltway is encircling three-fourths of the city of approximately 250,000 people in the hopes that it will help ease traffic for the 100,000 cars and trucks that pass through the area daily.
Beltway's Initial Problems Overcome
As might be expected, a large and complicated project such as this one has not progressed without a few hiccups, the Winston-Salem Journal reported July 12.
Relocating utility lines and completing land purchases pushed back a crucial section of the massive road project between Salem Parkway and U.S. 52 until next summer.
"It won't go all the way to [U.S.] 52 this year," Pat Ivey, a division engineer of the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), told the newspaper.
Ivey handles all state road projects for NCDOT in the counties of Davidson, Davie, Forsyth, Rowan and Stokes.
"Initially, the plan was to get it connected this year, but that's not going to happen," he added.
Planners first envisioned the Northern Beltway more than three decades ago as a road that would encircle Winston-Salem to divert long-haul traffic around the city's downtown center and provide more options for commuting locals.
It was designed to be built in two parts — an eastern and a western leg — extending from U.S. 158/Stratford Road in Clemmons, southwest of Winston-Salem, all the way around to the east in a semicircle before connecting to I-74 southeast of the city. NCDOT set U.S. 52, running north toward Mt. Airy, as the dividing line between the two halves of the project.
The western leg was first on the drawing board with construction slated to begin in 1999.
The Journal noted, though, that the Beltway was beset first by legal challenges not fully resolved until 2015. Later, funding holdups in the North Carolina General Assembly put Winston-Salem well behind other Tarheel cities seeking urban loops and helped push the 17.6-mi. eastern leg work ahead of the 16.8-mi. western leg.
The state's Map Act, approved in 1987, prevented property owners with land in the path of the Beltway from developing or selling until NCDOT was ready to buy it — a stalemate which kept prices artificially low.
The state's Court of Appeals later ruled that North Carolina had in effect taken the land through eminent domain and owed property owners fair market value. The state Supreme Court affirmed that decision in 2015, and sales have been closing since.
"Once we begin the western segment, we will own the land," Ivey told the Journal. "We won't have those [earlier] delays. That was a tremendous amount of the cost and time with the eastern leg."
Big picture, viewed from a car zipping along U.S. 52 or I-40, the rumbling of heavy earthmovers and free-flowing traffic along recently completed sections looks and feels like progress — even to those property owners squeezed for too long in the push to get the Beltway built.
"It's destructive to go over the top of neighborhoods and people's land," said Matthew Bryant, a Winston-Salem attorney who represented many of those landowners who had lived in the planned path of the freeway. "But roads made America what it is.
"As for commerce, Winston-Salem has been at the end of the line," he added. "[The Beltway] should be nothing but a financial benefit to the greater community [when it is done.]"
Breaking It Down
Absent flying in a helicopter or employing a drone, the best way for a car-bound taxpayer to see progress on the Northern Beltway is to take it in visible, digestible bites.
The closest, most tangible example can be found between Winston-Salem and Kernersville where locals shave time off their commutes by taking the Beltway between Walkertown and Salem Parkway.
Plus, a sizable chunk of the Beltway extending north and west toward — but not all the way to — U.S. 52 is scheduled to be open by November, providing Salem Parkway commuters with an immediate benefit.
"You'll be able to get on, but you'll have to get off in Rural Hall or on Hanes Mill Road to get to [U.S.] 52," Ivey told the Winston-Salem news source. "It will still be a significant improvement with just a little bit more [work] to go, but it's still a major bypass that will help avoid the congested area near downtown during busy times."
The entire eastern leg — including the very visible interchange with U.S. 52 under construction in Rural Hall — originally was slated to open this year, he said, but had to be delayed until the summer of 2023.
"[Then], next summer when it connects, there will be a regional benefit particularly to truckers driving from Salem Parkway to [U.S.] 52," he explained.
Expensive Work Around I-40 in East Ongoing
As motorists who use I-40 to travel east from Winston-Salem to Kernersville and Greensboro have seen, land clearance for a high-profile section of the Beltway near Union Cross Road also is well under way.
"It's the most expensive road project in Division 9 at $261 million," Ivey explained. "It's only a three-mi.-long project, but it has two very complicated interchanges."
To speed that construction, NCDOT is shifting travel lanes on I-40.
The finish of the eastern leg of the Northern Beltway between U.S. 311/I-74 on the city's southeast end to U.S. 52 in the west is within sight, the Journal reported, with a predicted completion date in 2027.
The western portion of the freeway project, though, has so far only seen pre-construction activities and will likely not be in use until the mid-2030s, according to the Journal.
When opened, the Northern Beltway will make Winston-Salem the seventh North Carolina city to enjoy a usable freeway bypass, after smaller cities like Asheville (I-240), Fayetteville (I-295), and Wilmington (I-140). Nearby Greensboro also has one (I-840), while Charlotte (I-485 and I-277) and Raleigh (I-440 and I-540) have two at their disposal.
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