Navigating traffic changes as work on westbound lanes of Cape Fear Memorial Bridge starts

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — The next phase of repair work on the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge is about to begin.

Crews have closed the westbound lanes going out of Wilmington in preparation for the work to start Tuesday.

Elsewhere, crews are adjusting traffic patterns, including adding a second lane to the 421 ramp to US 74 near the Battleship.

Trevor Carroll is a division maintenance engineer for the state’s Department of Transportation.

He said adding a second lane will help keep traffic moving smoothly out of Wilmington and into Brunswick County.

“We will have two lanes of traffic coming across Isabel Holmes, turning left onto 421 South, coming across our Thomas Rhodes Bridge, coming by the Battleship and then those two lanes will continue to flow over to Leland,” Carroll said. “We feel like that’ll help the situation that we’re going into with this increased traffic volumes on that particular section of 421.”

The DOT also put barricades on 3rd Street median crossovers at the intersections with Queen, Church,  Nun, and Orange Streets to ban left turns for drivers on 3rd Street and redirect the side-street traffic into turning right onto 3rd Street.

Carroll said they’ve looked at possible changes to other intersections along 3rd Street.

“We’ve evaluated all of those movements at that particular intersection for Wooster and 3rd and for that particular intersection, we feel like its, it’s really too tight of a turning radius to have two turn lanes turning right, so we’re gonna continue to have one turn lane turning right,”
Carroll said.

Work on the bridge’s westbound lanes is expected to be completed by May 23rd.

The contractor doing the work will get a $500,000 incentive if the work is completed before the deadline.