Business

NCDOT holds road hearing Wednesday

A tractor-trailer rounds a curve on Berkeley Road.

By Bill Moss, Published: October 9, 2015

Berkeley Road, Signal Hill Road and Thompson Street need to be widened because heavy trucks are using that route to avoid Four Seasons Boulevard, the NCDOT says.

A project to widen and add a bikeway to those roads is a proposed fix the state Department of Transportation is recommending, said Matt Champion, a transportation planner for Henderson County.
“DOT is pushing that project,” Champion said. “It’s not our TAC (Transportation Advisory Committee).”
The proposed Balfour Parkway from U.S. 64 East to N.C. 191 would provide some relief but that project is years away. The Berkeley Road project is also a long-range project.
“If this gets reprioritized it could be five to 10 years plus,” Champion said. “It would go into the database as a project that would get studied. It would take time before it got funded because there’s already projects that are funded and those would have to be completed. The time line for this is not immediate unless there is some big push for it to the funded and completed.”
It’s the only new project the NCDOT listed for Henderson County ahead of a public hearing next week on a new round of long-range planning for roadwork, bikeways, safety improvements and other transportation projects.
“We’ve done three rounds of prioritization and we’re beginning the fourth round,” said Joel Setzer, operations engineer for Division 14, which includes Henderson County. “We’re really in the early stages of that and right now we’re trying to figure out what we will be evaluating. Right now there are no rankings.”

Ties in with Duncan Hill Road

The Berkley Road project could become part of a larger improvement involving a currently ranked priority to improve Duncan Hill Road and Signal Hill Road from Four Seasons Boulevard to North Main Street. Under the NCDOT’s new approach to long-range planning, the 10-county Division 14 was allowed to submit a limited number of projects for consideration. It chose the Berkeley-Signal Hill-Thompson Street project, Setzer said, for safety reasons and because it ties in with the Duncan Hill Road improvement.
“If this gets added to the database and if it ranked high enough to get funded then we could work on it as a whole project,” Setzer said. “It has to go through a lot of steps to get funded.”

‘A significant freight route’

Tractor-trailers are using Thompson Street, Signal Hill Road and the narrow, winding Berkeley Road to reach the Kimberly-Clark plant and other destinations on Asheville Highway. The roads were never designed for such heavy truck traffic.
“It’s certainly a significant freight route,” Setzer said. “Freight carriers have discovered it as a shortcut to avoid Four Seasons Boulevard. Generally on a road like that you could look at 11 to 12 foot vehicular lanes and then paved shoulders for bicycle accommodations” that would be 4 feet wide.
Nominating this project for study would not knock out other priorities that the county Transportation Advisory Committee and the French Broad MPO have ranked the highest, including the proposed Balfour Parkway and I-26 widening.
“This is not taking the place of any of those,” Setzer said. “Those are still prominent projects and very worthwhile projects. They’re automatically included. We didn’t have to consider resubmitting those back into the database. We think this is a good project and we’d like to see it have a chance to get ranked.”
“The public workshop is to hear from the public about what’s been proposed to go into the database and what they think ought to be evaluated,” Setzer added. “Is there a better project than this one?” If so, the transportation planners will consider adding it.
The workshop is Wednesday, Oct. 14, from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. in Kaplan Auditorium in the Henderson County Library. Residents can drop in anytime to learn more about the Berkeley Road-to-Four Seasons Boulevard project or suggest other road improvements. The public may also submit comments by emailing jsetzer@ncdot.gov or by calling at 828-586-2141. Comments must be received by 5 p.m. Nov. 2.