Like Winston-Salem Journal columnist Scott Sexton, I’ve had my share of white-knuckle drives around the city’s infamous Hawthorne Curve, where Business I-40 runs—roller-coaster style– right along the city’s skyline. And let me tell you it’s really fun when the downtown exits are backed out.
Sexton describes his first encounter with the Hawthorne Curve–in a Ford F-150 with his father–before delving into the history of that crazy stretch of highway:
The East-West Expressway, Interstate 40, the Hawthorne Curve, Kurfee’s Curve — a nickname applied to tar a former mayor because who else but a politician doing favors for cronies would back such a monstrosity? — Business 40 has been an outdated menace almost since the day it opened in 1960.
…The federal government added the planned East-West Expressway to the highway system in 1957. Traffic, the engineers said at the time, would max out at 30,000 vehicles per day, a number it blew past in the first year it opened, 1961.
By ’73, that count had hit 56,800. Factor in all the VW Beetles and Hippie Vans, with their 2-stroke engines and the zero to 40 mph acceleration of a sumo wrestler running uphill, that number should have been doubled yet again.
The point being, that road — and that Curve — has been a pain in the rump (and obsolete) through more than 50 years and rounds of “improvements.”
Finally the day has come when the Hawthorne Curve will be fixed—at a cost of $100 million. Which in turn means that access to downtown will be cut off. As Sexton explains, the Department of Transportation tried trial-run closures on weekends, which he describes as the “the Novacain before the root canal.” Note to self—if if ever find myself traveling to Winston-Salem–it’s a nice sister city to my home city Greensboro—take the long way.
