DOT will close one lane in each direction on the I-440 Beltline this Sunday so a road contractor can put down stripes on new pavement.

That'll be welcome news for drivers who had a hard time seeing the temporary stripes. Several folks have complained to the Road Worrier. A couple of weeks ago, Trudy Kappel asked:

Do you know if the lines painted on the newly repaved section of I440 are the final work? They vanish on a dark rainy night.

Sunday's striping work will take place between Wade Avenue and Wake Forest Road, and between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Starting at 9 a.m. Friday, Wade Avenue traffic will be squeezed again into one lane each way, while DOT crews do more work at the Canterbury Road intersection.

A sewer leak at Canterbury prompted Raleigh and DOT officials to close the lanes for repair work Wednesday night. For an update on when Friday's work will end and the lanes will reopen, call 511 or check DOT's Triangle travel info site online.

DOT is repaving Wade this fall between Faircloth and Oberlin. That work is not supposed to impede rush hour traffic, weekdays from 6 to 9 a.m. and 4 to 7 p.m.  

The state Division of Parks and Recreation toyed for a year with the idea of opening a third automobile entrance to Umstead State Park (at Graylyn Drive), and it received a few hundred comments expressing sharp opinions on both sides.

The Raleigh City Council's Public Works Committee struggled this year with calls to erect "No Parking" signs in residential neighborhoods where Umstead users leave their cars There were sharp, competing opinions here, too.

State and city agencies helped create these problems. The Umstead maintenance gate at the corner of Trenton and Reedy Creek Roads became an even more appealing destination for park users after the city and the state extended the Reedy Creek Greenway west from the NC Museum of Art -- and stopped it there. The closest parking lot is two miles away at the art museum.

NCDOT banned parking on the state roads outside the Graylyn and Reedy Creek Road maintenance gates -- after it justified paving Graylyn by using high traffic counts that had been generated by those same parked cars.

Both the city and the state are wary of taking steps that will set uncontrollable precedents, cost money and perhaps create new sets of environmental, legal and political problems.

So the parks division refused this week to open the Graylyn gate. And the city council said ... [MORE]

Runners and cyclists hoping for easier access to the state's busiest urban state park lost ground today:

State officials said they won't turn dead-end Graylyn Drive into a third automobile entrance to Umstead State Park.

And the Raleigh City Council prepared to post more No Parking signs on neighborhood streets near an Umstead gate on Reedy Creek Road. [Update 5 p.m. Tuesday: The council delayed action on the No Parking proposal, sending the matter back to committee for more deliberation.]

Lewis Ledford, the state parks director, announced a plan to improve a bumpy gravel road inside the park that provides access from the Glenwood Avenue entrance to the Sycamore Bike and Bridle Trailhead (see map). The road will be paved when funds are available, and the trailhead parking lot will be expanded.

He rejected an option, floated a year ago, to let park patrons drive to the same trailhead on what is now a maintenance road with a locked gate at the end of Graylyn Drive off Ebenezer Church Road.

“Our overriding philosophy must be to minimize the development footprint at Umstead as one way to protect the wild and natural landscape of this state park,” Ledford said in a news release. ... [MORE]

There are unconfirmed reports of a spacecraft landing in Duke Forest.

Tune into WKNC FM (88.1) from 7 to 8 p.m. tonight for details -- with sound effects.

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. ...

Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. ...

Well, maybe it wasn't even close. But it's a relief to learn that the US 70 Clayton Bypass did NOT win a prize as America's most innovative transportation project this year.

Yes, it's pretty. Yes, it provides a quicker path to the beach for U.S. 70 drivers.

But:

* The project was delayed for years and the pricetag grew enormoously because of DOT environmental dithering,
* It makes the weekday drive WORSE for many I-40 commuters, and
* Its innovative technology is broken. DOT folks didn't realize this until they read it in the N&O. They're still trying to repair it.

So it would have been embarrassing to win undeserved honors from AAA, the US Chamber of Commerce and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

DOT Secretary Gene Conti lobbied Johnston County residents, construction moguls and even his own 12,000 employees to stuff an online ballot box with enough mouse clicks to earn honors as the "People's Choice" project.

We got out-clicked by fans of a Florida project: "The 95 Express Miami Project is a $63 million High Occupancy/Toll lanes arrangement that encourages carpooling and rewards travelers with lower fares for traveling during off-peak hours."

And a group of judges gave the top prize to the Minnesota DOT for the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis -- not the one that collapsed in 2007, but the replacement that was designed and built in 14 months.

You can count on road crews to park their bulldozers on Thanksgiving and other major holidays -- but watch out when you're driving around the Triangle this Halloween.

NCDOT engineers say that, weather permitting, they'll be at work Saturday on a number of repaving and road improvement projects that could cause traffic backups.

Lane closings are likely on the I-40 widening project in West Raleigh (at the Wade Avenue bridge), and for paving jobs on:

    - I-540 north of I-40,
    - I-40 between I-540 and Wade,
    - I-440 and
    - US 64 / 264.

DOT engineers sometimes provide road work schedule updates on their travel information website and 511 phone service.  Unfortunately, DOT does not publish daily details on exactly when and where you can expect to find construction delays. 

Daylight savings season ends Sunday at 2 a.m. That means the sun will set an hour earlier -- so, starting next week, we'll all have a darker drive home from work each day.

In a DOT press release, the state's chief traffic engineer warns us to be careful:

“For many people, it will be almost dark or dark when they leave work, making it more difficult to see bicyclists and pedestrians, as well as other vehicles,” said Kevin Lacy, state traffic engineer for the NCDOT. “As days grow shorter, drivers should also stay alert for school children at bus stops in the early morning hours.”

“Additionally, commuters should be on the lookout for deer, which are most active this time of year especially at dusk,” added Lacy.

This is a good time to make sure your headlights, tail lights, brake lights and signal lights are working. Every night on my drive home, I see drivers who don't realize they need to replace a bulb or two.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- DARPA, the folks who say they invented the Internet 40 years ago -- today announced a new technology competition in the spirit of Internet technology and social networking.

It sounds fiendishly simple: Be the first person or team to determine the locations of 10 large red weather balloons, and win $40,000.

The 10 balloons will be moored in plain sight, visible from nearby roadways, in locations across the continental United States on Dec. 5. The winner will be the first ... [MORE]

JetBlue Airways, which offers one daily flight from RDU Airport to Boston Logan, said today it will add two more next summer.

That will bring JetBlue's RDU service to seven daily flights, including three to Boston. JetBlue now has three daily flights to New York JFK, one to Boston and one to Fort Lauderdale.