News

LIGHTNING EDITORIAL: North Main becomes a priority

By Bill Moss, Published: October 15, 2015

The proposal announced by the North Carolina Department of Transportation to widen the back way from Four Seasons Boulevard to the Balfour area of Asheville Highway was puzzling for a couple of reasons and sensible for another.

Is the project needed?
Part of it is, now more than ever. The project would tie in to a road improvement the county Transportation Advisory Committee has already identified as a priority. The TAC’s plan would improve Baldwin Hill and Duncan Hill roads, which form a triangle at North Main. The NCDOT’s plan, on the other hand, has more than one focus.
State highway engineers have spotted the need for widening Berkeley Road, Signal Hill Road and Thompson Street because lots of heavy trucks use that route as a shortcut from Four Seasons Boulevard to Asheville Highway.
The Balfour-to-Four Seasons Boulevard project is a proposed new priority of the DOT, not a product of the local transportation advisers.
“It’s certainly a significant freight route,” said Joel Setzer, operations engineer for the DOT division that includes Henderson County. “Freight carriers have discovered it as a shortcut to avoid Four Seasons Boulevard.”
But is that a reason to widen it?
After the Hendersonville Lightning reported on the DOT proposal last week, a motorist who frequently travels Berkeley Road said there’s a reason for the heavy traffic: Scale dodging. Tractor-trailers use Four Seasons Boulevard and Asheville Highway to avoid the weigh station at mile marker 46, just as they use Howard Gap Road from Four Seasons to Fletcher. But they’re also using the Thompson Street-to-Balfour shortcut.
“I’ve followed a number of them over the years just to see if they had any stops along the way, and they didn’t,” our Mountain Home correspondent wrote.
Another puzzling part of the NCDOT plan is adding bike lanes on a widened Berkeley Road. Although we stand second to no one in our advocacy for in-town bike lanes, we’d point out that the city of Hendersonville — thanks to an NCDOT grant, no less! — just awarded a $1.1 million contract to extend the Oklawaha Greenway to Berkeley Park. Makes us wonder whether the road boys in Sylva know what the bike boys in Raleigh are doing.
Finally, though, we have to credit the DOT for being dead-on when it comes to intra-city priorities. North Main at Duncan Hill has quite suddenly become the highest priority for road and intersection improvements. Just this week the city Planning Board blessed and sent to the City Council the Eastside Meadows project, a development with 200 apartments and potentially offices, retail and restaurants. That means workers, residents, customers and diners may be streaming into an area fed by winding, hilly, narrow roads. Needs fixing for sure
As for Berkeley Road, we’d recommend saving a couple million bucks by posting a sign that says “No tractor-trailers.” As for North Main at Duncan Hill, the NCDOT either got lucky or was prescient in recognizing the need for safety and traffic flow improvements. That work needs to go right away onto the new priority list.