Goodbye Business 40 And Hello Salem Parkway

It was nearly a year in the making, but this morning, state transportation officials finally announced the new name for a 20-mile section of the historic Business 40 route. It took place during a ground-breaking ceremony for the highway's Improvement Project in Winston-Salem. 

The public search for a new name began last November, and just two months later, the North Carolina Department of Transportation had already received nearly 2,000 nominations. That pool of community suggestions quickly grew to nearly 10,000, and a committee eventually selected four finalists: Golden Leaf Parkway, Salem Parkway, Piedmont Corridor, and Innovation Parkway.

The winner is Salem Parkway.

Governor Pat McCrory made the official announcement, adding that he felt the project is long overdue.

"The way we built roads for the past fifty years in North Carolina was not based upon data, or common sense", he said. "It was based upon where the powerful politicians just happened to live. And Winston-Salem was punished as a result of this for decades". 

North Carolina Department of Transportation Secretary Nick Tennyson, who introduced the governor, said that tradition began to change with the implimentation of the Strategic Transportation Investments Law. It passed in 2013 and allows NCDOT to use its funding more efficiently to enhance the state's infrastructure. 

McCrory continued, "Now what we did with a bipartisan support, they said we're gonna take the politics out of road building, and actually build the roads based upon—how about this for a change—where the cars are; where the accidents occur and where we need future economic development".

The design phase for the $99 million Business 40 improvement project is still only about 20 percent complete. That phase, along with utility preparations and property acquisitions should wrap up early next year. The actual construction phase won't begin until the summer of 2017. The official closure of Business 40 will start in late 2018.

The closure will remain in effect for about two years, while construction continues, removing old pavement, replacing bridges, and modernizing on and off ramps. The completion date for the new and improved Salem Parkway is 2020.