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A year after Carrboro officials vetoed a $6.6 million state plan to four-lane a busy stretch of Smith Level Road, NCDOT proposed today to build what Carrboro wants: added sidewalks and bike lanes, but no added lanes for automobiles.
If Carrboro agrees, DOT will:
- Replace a traffic signal with a traffic roundabout at the Smith Level intersection with Rock Haven Road (the entrance road for Carrboro High School)
- Make Smith Level two lanes wide with a center turn lane north from Rock Haven to BPW Club Road
- Make Smith Level two lanes with a grass median and 8-foot shoulders north from BPW Club Road to the bridge over Morgan Creek (which is just south of the N.C. 54 Bypass)
- Build bike lanes and sidewalks on both sides of Smith Level, and extending sidewalks onto Culbreth Road to meet the spot where Culbreth sidewalks end now.
NCDOT says it will buy enough added right-of-way along the road so automobile lanes can be added in future decades, if Carrboro ever decides they are needed.
Last spring, NCDOT officials had offered to build it Carrboro's way, without adding extra lanes, but only if Carrboro would take over the responsibility and expense of maintaining Smith Level Road in the future. This week, NCDOT dropped that condition.
Bruce Siceloff reports on traffic and transportation. A News & Observer reporter, editor and blogger since 1976, he took over the