UPDATE: The road closure reopened late on Thursday night and traffic patterns returned to normal.
Traffic along one of Chapel Hill’s most traveled roads is being diverted Thursday afternoon thanks to a car crash and subsequent road closure.
A key stretch of North Carolina Highway 54 on the town limits of Chapel Hill and Durham — which leads to an exchange with Interstate 40 — closed shortly after 2 p.m. The Durham Police Department, which is handling response to the case since it happened in Durham County, confirmed to Chapelboro a vehicle crashed into a utility pole near Falconbridge Road and downed several power lines. Emergency responders then worked to clear the area and close the road to avoid damaging the lines, with the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s traffic map reporting NC 54 as closed in both directions between Falconbridge Road and Farrington Road.
Footage captured by WRAL’s helicopter team on Thursday afternoon during the closure showed one vehicle wrecked and lying on the bank near the Hardee’s franchise off of NC 54, as well as a truck with a tangle of power lines underneath the vehicle.
Being a critical east-west thoroughfare between Chapel Hill and Durham, the closure of NC 54 led to significant traffic on other roads detouring the area. Drivers can detour the closure by taking Barbee Chapel Road to Stagecoach Road or Farrington Road while traveling east, and westbound travelers can detour by using I-40 or NC 751 — but many roads in the surrounding area are experiencing more traffic congestion as a result.
Durham Police told Chapelboro no major injuries were reported in the crash. As of 4:15 p.m., Duke Energy’s Outage Map did not report any outages for customers in the area as a result of the downed power lines.
The police department said no timeline has been made for the length of the road closure and necessary repairs to the utility pole, power lines and road. The NCDOT traffic map estimates it could last into the 6 p.m. hour on Thursday.
Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.
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