The South Carolina Department of Transportation will repave an 11-mile stretch of Interstate 26 in the Charleston area under a $10.9 million emergency contract, the department said Wednesday.
The work covers I-26 from about a mile east of Ashley Phosphate Road to a third of a mile west of U.S. 17A, according to SCDOT. The contract pays for patching and resurfacing what the department called a deteriorating section of the interstate.
SCDOT Secretary Christy Hall told the department’s commission May 20 that the stretch’s pavement, a type called open-graded friction course, had started to cause problems, WCSC-TV reported. The state adopted it 10 to 15 years ago as a safety measure to push water off the driving surface, Hall said, but near the end of its service life, “it just unravels all at one time in some of those sections.”
Traffic on the stretch ranges from 77,000 to 123,000 vehicles a day, making it one of the most heavily traveled areas in the state, SCDOT said. The department said the repaving “will be a major improvement for users of this busy stretch of highway.”
Patching is set to begin Tuesday night, June 1, weather permitting. Resurfacing will follow in June, though SCDOT has not set a specific start date.
Crews will repave the exit and entrance ramps first, then the main lanes. They will remove the existing surface and replace it with new asphalt on all travel lanes, including the shoulders and emergency lanes, according to the department.
All work will be done at night, Sunday through Thursday, from about 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. Drivers should expect both single-lane and multi-lane closures, the department said.
The project is scheduled to be completed in October.
