Patch work is seen along 440 near West End. Repair work in 2009 – grooves cut into the worn concrete surface – has resulted in a badly damaged surface.

-- Michelle Morrow | The Ledger

It’s entirely possible that when Nashville Mayor Megan Barry said this month she was “thrilled” that the state had listed I-440 repairs as a top priority, thousands of Midstate residents fist-bumped in agreement.

I-440 is one of four major projects the state Department of Transportation singled out for action in the new fiscal year that begins on July 1, part of the IMPROVE Act.

Some of the 7.6-mile concrete road’s median could disappear to make room for three lanes of traffic each way throughout the route.

Most of the route already is three-lane, but this would widen key bottlenecks such as the bridge over I-65.

Damaged pavement will be removed and replaced, and the new surface – concrete or asphalt – will be determined during the evaluation process.

Moreover, the work will be handled on a fast track as a design-build project, which combines all or some phases of a project into a single contract.

If all goes according to plan, actual construction on 440 will start next summer, TDOT officials say.

It will mark a major overhaul for a road that opened for traffic in 1987 after years of discussion. Portions of concrete slab on 440 were replaced over the years and a grooving project in 2009 was undertaken to help address hydroplaning issues and extend the road’s life.

Potholes are hard to avoid along 440 near the West End exit.

-- Michelle Morrow | The Ledger

“What we did on 440 in 2009, we went in and actually used a saw and cut grooves that are parallel to traffic flow,” TDOT Chief Engineer Paul Degges explained in the Ledger last year. “We worked with the concrete industry to try to find some ways to improve the skidability on the roads.

“We did some texturing work and then put those grooves in it to help bleed the water out.”

The $8 million repair project resulted in water freezing and thawing where sections of concrete slabs meet, producing potholes.

The entire roadway must now be resurfaced.

I-440 makes a partial loop around the city through some of its most popular neighborhoods. It connects with Interstate 40 just west of downtown near Sylvan Heights, loops over West End and past Hillsboro Road, continues eastward through Melrose and Woodbine and eventually hooks up with I-24 between Murfreesboro Road and Thompson Lane.

It allows motorists onto Interstates 40, 24 and 65, and also offers access to residential and business areas such as Green Hills and Nolensville Road/South Nashville, TDOT spokeswoman B.J. Doughty said in an email.

As these areas have grown, so has traffic. Each day about 100,000 vehicles on average use the road, a road built for 64,000, according to TDOT.

The recently passed state IMPROVE Act, which funds transportation infrastructure, has allowed the I-440 project to move forward more quickly, and work to 440 will be paid for with both state and federal money.

The plan is to advertise for a contractor and designer this July, get them under contract, and then begin work when there’s warm weather in 2018, Degges says.

Design-build is a “somewhat streamlined project,” he adds. “We can use the design-build tool to accelerate work and to bring innovations that the designer and contractor might have.”

The format is suited for a project such as I-440 where the state doesn’t have to buy additional rights-of-way or move utilities, he explains. That work was done back in the 1980s.

“One of the biggest things on I-440 are the impact to traffic and business,” Degges adds. “We want the best idea that balances the cost of the project and the impacts to traffic and businesses.

If we shut it down for a year, I’d have people screaming at me, (but) we could do the work very easily.

“We have to balance the contractor’s need to do it quickly and the public need” to use the road.

“Somewhere between total closure and very short-term closure, we optimize the cost of the project and reducing impacts to the motoring public and businesses there. I’ve got to have an affordable project and can’t have impacts to the public that are so horrific.”

Right now it’s too early to say where work will begin and how it will proceed, TDOT says. One possibility is to work on 440 one quadrant at a time, but it remains to be seen what contractors will propose and which approach is chosen. It’s also too early to say whether the road will be concrete or asphalt.

The first step will be to ask contractors and designers to describe their qualifications for the job, in what is called a request for qualifications. Once the state determines which contractors and designers are qualified, it issues a request for proposals and evaluates the proposals to award the contract.

Doughty says volumes of traffic have grown dramatically since I-440 was constructed. The impacts to that traffic during any future construction will be a factor in determining how this project will be built.

“Basically, TDOT will want to ensure the work done next year will serve the public for many years to come,” she says.

TDOT will add details on the project to its web site as the project is developed over the coming months. The link is http://www.tn.gov/tdot/topic/interstate-440