This is op/ed by Raleigh communications consultant Matthew Eisley, who is keenly interested in transportation issues.
ASHEVILLE – Interstate 40 from Asheville west into Tennessee is a vital artery for commerce, leisure travel, emergency response, and national defense. Yet more than half a century ago, when politics trumped wisdom, our predecessors built the highway in the wrong place, along the wild and remote Pigeon River Gorge, where from the first months it has failed time and again. It has been the notorious scene of repeated landslides, fog-induced crashes, fatalities, and floods.
Every few years something closes I-40, sometimes for weeks or longer, imposing enormous economic and social costs. Four months after Hurricane Helene’s deluge washed it out near the state border, the highway remains shuttered, a shattered monument to hubris and obstinacy.
For now, we have no choice but to repair and reopen the treacherous hairpin highway. But we should start planning to relocate it permanently where it belonged in the first place: roughly following the route of U.S. 25 along the lower, wider, more gently sloping French Broad River…