US 15-501: Help is on the way

There are few things in the Bull City that are more dreaded than the segment of US 15-501 between its expressway's end and I-40 -- especially on a game day at UNC or Duke. Once you pass Garrett Rd. going southbound or Southwest Durham Rd. going northbound, you are likely to run into tremendous delays and traffic that is far more stop than go.

Plans to widen the segment of 15-501 between Garrett and Mt. Moriah got a boost this summer, though, with NCDOT placing materials needed for the New Hope Creek bridge on the state letting list as of Aug. 21.  This starts the ball rolling in turn for getting bids on the replacement of the harrowing 2-lane bridges that form the primary bottleneck to widening the road.

Once the bridge replacement is done -- a project that the Herald-Sun noted in February could take two years to complete, given the need for a temporary structure to allow traffic to pass during construction -- the actual road widening can begin apace.

On a related note, at tonight's City Council meeting, the agenda includes proposed municipal agreements with NCDOT for the city's share of sidewalks along the widened bridge and roadway, bringing better pedestrian access to a corridor that has most sorely lacked for it in the past.

Comments

[JDC]

Sure, just widen the roads. And if you're obese, just loosen your belt. Our problems are solved!

[Michael Bacon]

"Once you pass Garrett Rd." nothing... The Garrett Rd. stoplight is the worst offender of all of them along that stretch, and that's saying quite a bit. That thing should have been made into an overpass years ago -- without it, the stretch would be freeway clear from I-85 to Patterson Place.

I love pedestrian improvements, but sidewalks on that bridge are lipstick on a pig. A completely separated bike/ped trail from the T. J. Maxx shopping center up to the new development across Mt. Moriah from No Hope Commons would be much more useful.

Are you sure the pedestrian improvements aren't about the construction of the New Hope Creek greenway running *under* the bridge, N-S?

[barry]

Exactly. Getting across the road is a much more difficult problem than going alongside the road. And given that NCDOT actually thinks the sidewalk on the Duke Street/I-85 bridge provides adequate pedestrian friendliness, i hope that someone else gets a chance to approve whatever design they come up with along that stretch of 15/501.

I have to say, the times i find myself on that road during rush hour, i have a hard time figuring out what the fuss is all about. Maybe it's all those years i spent sitting still on the Long Island Expressway, or on the approach to the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge, but 15/501 just doesn't feel all that bottlenecky to me. Widening a road to accomodate a peak traffic situation that only occurs a couple of hours a week for a portion of the year doesn't strike me as sound policy.

[Michael Bacon]

I would say that the traffic along that stretch is pretty bad about 10 hours a day, and downright wretched at rush hour. A lot of this could be helped with some intelligent timing of the lights, but there's also the argument that once the East End Connector is built, there will be four stoplights in the way of completing the true "Durham Loop" that Caleb Southern drew up years ago to stop Eno Drive.

I'm against a lot of big new road projects, but $25 million to create a joint exit for Mt. Moriah Rd. and Patterson Place, an overpass and exit for Garrett Rd., and a stoplight-free onramp/offramp to I-40 would be money well spent.