NC 50 Corridor Study - News and Updates

NC50 Corridor Study





			News and Updates From Raleigh News and Observer, February 17, 2011 http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/02/17/994915/over-the-next-high-hill-a-wider.html# Study recommended improvement for N.C. 50 It doesn't take much to clog the action on skinny, hilly N.C. 50 BY BRUCE SICELOFF - Staff Writer RALEIGH -- It doesn't take much to clog the action on skinny, hilly N.C. 50, and to make a few hundred people late for work. On Wednesday morning it was a minivan driver who didn't notice that stop-and-roll traffic had stopped again, just south of Nipper Road. He rear-ended a Mini Cooper and knocked it sideways across the oncoming lane. That was enough to slow every body - rural Granville County residents driving south to Raleigh offices, and Raleigh folks going north to prison and hospital jobs in Butner - for nearly an hour. "When you're on N.C. 50, you put your life in someone else's hands," says Hubert L. Gooch Jr., a retired school administrator and Granville County commissioner. "Because you don't have any control over it." Now state and local planners have offered a proposal they say would cut accidents and speed the flow on N.C. 50 - without spoiling the environment or breaking the bank - with widenings and other improvements to be phased in over 25 years. Granville leaders have lobbied the state Department of Transportation for years to improve four-lane N.C. 50, the county's main road into Raleigh and Wake County. They say a better road would give them a stronger bond with the Triangle and its economic and cultural opportunities. But widening what Raleigh calls Creedmoor Road has been low among Wake's road priorities, especially with the environmental concerns that would surround changes where the two-lane road crosses the watershed of Falls Lake, the water source for 450,000 Wake residents. A yearlong study funded by DOT and CAMPO, a regional planning agency, has produced a long list of mostly small recommendations targeted at difficult side roads and other trouble spots along N.C. 50. There are proposals to widen the whole road eventually, but only a few fixes are suggested for quick attention: Widening short parts of N.C. 50 near Old Weaver Road and the N.C. 98 interchange to add passing lanes. Right now, the Falls Lake bridge provides the only long stretch where it's safe and legal to pass slow cars and pulpwood trucks chugging north to Interstate 85. The work, targeted for completion by 2014, would cost $7.4 million. Converting a two-mile stretch between Norwood Road and the 540 Outer Loop from two to four lanes by 2018, with a landscaped median, wide shoulders and bike provisions, for $22 million. This section is crowded with 20,000 cars a day. But N.C. 50 is less busy farther north - just 8,000 cars cross Falls Lake each day - so the remaining four-lane improvements would be scheduled between 2022 and 2035. "One reason for doing it this way is that DOT has a cap on what it can spend," said Ed Johnson, director of CAMPO, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization. "We could recommend something north of $100 million and abandon all hope of getting any of it started. Now we have a menu of projects we can choose from and do as the need arises." N.C. 50 runs in a nearly straight line over hilltops and through valleys in northern Wake suburbs, the wooded shores of Falls Lake, and sandy farm fields in rural Granville County. Stopping to make a left turn can cause long backups. Many parts of the road have steep, narrow shoulders or none at all. If you pull too far to the right, you could tumble into a creek. DOT counts more than 150 crashes a year along 14 miles of N.C. 50 between Creedmoor and the 540 Outer Loop, more accidents than usual for a comparable state highway. Three people have died in crashes over the past three years. Commuters told planners they want a smoother, faster drive, but residents along N.C. 50 didn't want a big road project that would spoil the view. Even where they add lanes and a median, engineers will be asked for a road design that minimizes the need to take nearby land. It won't be as big as the recently widened N.C. 55 in western Wake County, officials said. "You don't want to just go in there and flatten everything out, and knock out houses and horse farms" said Joey Hopkins, deputy engineer for DOT's Division 5, which includes Wake and Granville counties. "We wanted things we can do to improve traffic safety and flow but not have as great an impact on the human environment and the natural environment, both." Other recommendations include reducing the speed limit from 55 to 45 mph between the 540 Loop and Falls Lake, and realigning minor intersections to make it easier for drivers going in and out of side roads. Paved shoulders are recommended to support biking and walking along much of N.C. 50 and several side roads, along with steps to protect water quality from the effects of road improvements and future private development. The recommendations will be published online for public comment at www.nc50today.com . Then state and regional officials will decide how the N.C. 50 proposals stack up against other local road priorities competing for money. "Anything for N.C. 50 will be better," said Gooch, 75, the Granville County commissioner. "It probably won't be finished in my lifetime, because I probably won't be here in 2035. But it makes sense to do it in stages. And I hope once they start working on the road, they'll recognize the need to complete it." bruce.siceloff@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4527 Other News "To be widened or not to be widened" North Raleigh News and Midtown Raleigh News, April 21, 2010 “Development approved in Falls Lake watershed,” WRAL, April 5, 2010 “Falls Lake cleanup will be costly, contentious,” News & Observer, March 7, 2010