Significant closures caused by flooding from Hurricane Helene remain on interstates 26 and 40 on both sides of the North Carolina/Tennessee border, putting the onus on routing software that steers truckers clear of roadways that aren’t available to them.
While there are still hundreds of other road closures in both states, from U.S. highways down to small state roads, the status of the two key interstates serving the western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee region remains mixed.
Closings are based on a complex set of rules and regulations, but the most extreme shutdowns remain on Interstate 40 on both sides of the state line and on Interstate 26 in Tennessee.
To deal with those diversions, truckers are looking to their routing software – the second time in six to seven months they have needed to do so because of significant closures. In the first case, the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, the solution wasn’t all that complicated: Take the two tunnels that go under Baltimore Harbor, or stay on Interstate 695 around the western side of the Baltimore metropolitan area.
But the significant loss of access on two interstates, to say nothing of U.S. highways, poses a far more complex problem. For example, the North Carolina Department of Transportation Friday was reporting approximately 415 road closures and at least 120 bridges that needed to be replaced in that state alone.
Rishi Mehra, vice president of commercial mapping and routing technology at Trimble, works with the segment at the technology company that offers CoPilot, which at its most basic is a routing service for trucks and other vehicles.
Mehra told FreightWaves in a recent interview that the ability of the trucking industry to work around the outages “is starting to look a lot better.”
“We have started to divert traffic, based on the guidelines, to go a little bit more south and then across from the north,” he said.
The guidelines are uploaded into the Trimble CoPilot system and serve as the basis for diverting truck traffic around closed roads. PC Miler is the Trimble companion software that operates in a trucking company’s back office; CoPilot is in the truck cab.
Falling back on the US Highways
Mehra said Trimble (NASDAQ: TRMB) has been “taking advantage of U.S. highways.” He added that the diversionary routing was not done solely by Trimble, but was produced after consultations with local authorities about where they preferred vehicles, especially trucks, to travel while avoiding closed roads.
For example, U.S. Highway 19 runs parallel to Interstate 26 most of the way from Asheville, North Carolina, up to the Tennessee line. U.S. Highway 25 also runs from the Asheville area into Tennessee, though it enters the Volunteer State at a considerable distance from where I-26 crosses the border.
Mehra noted that around Asheville itself, the interstates are open. “That is helping ease the traffic flow in other areas,” he said, calling it more “structured” as a result. “We are corresponding with local authorities to make sure we are not diverting traffic that would hamper the restoration process in any way.”
Local governments are not necessarily Trimble customers, Mehra said. What Trimble wants from those authorities, is “for them to feed us information. What are you seeing? What are you modeling? How can we route trucks away from the area? How can we best regulate traffic for you?”
The end is not near
The return of full access to the two key interstates in the region is not going to happen anytime soon. Months rather than weeks is the focus of much of the discussion.
It can be a good news/bad news situation. For example, I-26 in North Carolina, which despite having an even number normally reserved for east-west highways, runs mostly north to northwest south and north of Asheville, is fully open after a brief closure in the wake of Helene.
The problem is that once a driver on 26 nears the Tennessee line, the vehicle won’t be allowed to cross into that state because except for local traffic, the road is closed near the state line.
So, a truck coming out of North Carolina and headed toward Tennessee on 26, according to Mark Nagi, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Transportation, would need to exit the interstate at Exit 3 in North Carolina. Passenger vehicles can continue on but must exit Interstate 26 at Exit 40 in Tennessee and then detour through the town of Erwin. Commercial vehicles making local deliveries can continue past Exit 3.
Meanwhile, truck traffic coming down Interstate 26 from the north, like the Johnson City, Tennessee, area, needs to exit 26 at Exit 37, Nagi said in an email to FreightWaves.
Hopes for I26 traffic in Tennessee
The state hopes to be able to open I-26 all the way this week, but as a two-lane highway, he added.
“Construction activities continue on I-26 to get 1-lane in both directions between Exit 37 and Exit 40,” Nagi said. “This traffic will be on the westbound side. Once completed a vital east-west connection on the interstate will be reestablished. Look for this to occur later this week.”
However, wide loads will not be permitted. Nagi said those loads are being detoured through a wide-sweeping alternate route using Interstates 81 and 77.
Interstate 26 has guidelines that allow local vehicles to use the roadway in that area near Erwin, but not for the portion with two collapsed bridges on 26 that are between exits 37 and 40. The local vehicles able to use the interstate are after Exit 40 to the border with North Carolina.
But even on that stretch of Interstate 26 between Exit 40 and the state line, in addition to the local traffic-only restriction, the road is a two-lane highway – one lane open in each direction.
Meanwhile, according to Nagi, Interstate 40 is open in Cocke County, Tennessee, in each direction – one lane each on the normally westbound side of the highway – between mile marker 446 and 451, which is just before the state line.
But it is only open to local traffic, the spokesman said. He said any commercial vehicles headed down I-40 toward the border with North Carolina should exit at Exit 440.
Across the border, I-40 is closed in both directions in North Carolina from the state line to Exit 20.
Aaron Moody, a spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Transportation, said the state has recently awarded an $8 million contract to stabilize Interstate 40 before a larger rebuilding is undertaken.
He called discussion about when Interstate 40 in North Carolina might return to normal the “million-dollar question.”
Asked if I-40 in North Carolina could be turned into a two-lane highway on the portion of the road that wasn’t heavily damaged by floodwaters, as has been done in Tennessee on Interstate 26, Moody said that would largely depend on the plans of the contractor the state ultimately chooses for a permanent rebuild of I-40 in the Tar Heel state.
“We can’t really answer that with great confidence right now, because we don’t know what designs will be brought to the table, and we don’t know what the safety requirements will look like for contractors trying to go in there,” Moody said.
Are shippers understanding?
What is going on with the repair of damaged roads – not just interstates – has an impact on what Trimble is doing.
Mehra said how a company gets rerouted could depend on its relationship with a shipper. That relationship could be such that the shipper willingly accepts a 50-to-100-mile diversion. “So we’ve helped with some of that analysis,” Mehra said “Some of our customers have come back and said, ‘Can you analyze this for us and let us know what the true impact would be if we completely avoid this whole stretch and take a different road?’” In some cases, he added, shippers fully accept the diversion and the extra miles.
Relying on U.S. highways has its own set of challenges. Some stretches of a U.S. highway allow traffic to flow without interruptions and at a rate close to that of an interstate highway; others can have a series of red lights.
Mehra said no routing software can fully plan out the impact of red lights on a U.S. highway or any local road. But the traffic model is “slowed down,” he said, “to model that impact into the travel time. But some red lights are unavoidable in areas.”
