BY KIRK ROSS
Staff Writer
CARRBORO — State Department of Transportation engineers and the Town of Carrboro have reached a tentative agreement on a downscaled Smith Level Road widening project, ending more than a decade of disagreement over the configuration of the road.
Mike Mills, Division 7 engineer, said the main difference from previous designs is the reduction of the number of travel lanes from four to two, with a grassy divided median along the stretch from the Morgan Creek bridge to BPW Club Road. The two-lane plan includes shoulders for bike lanes and sidewalks along both sides, placed on the other side of the ditches.
The rest of the project, Mills said, is closer to what was previously proposed. From BPW Club Road to Culbreth Road, the plan calls for two lanes with a third center-turn lane. Heading south, the road drops down to two lanes and includes bike lanes and sidewalks up to a roundabout at Rock Haven Road.
The plan, Mills said, got a favorable review during a meeting two weeks ago between Carrboro and DOT officials. Last week, the board of aldermen scheduled a public information session on the widening project for April 27 at 6:30 p.m. at Town Hall. The information session will be followed by a public hearing on the project at 7:30.
Jeff Brubaker, transportation planner with the Town of Carrboro, said links to the plans and descriptions will be posted on the town’s website this week.
(The Citizen will post links from town and DOT sources when them become available.)
The turnaround comes almost a year after Carrboro’s last formal rejection of a widening plan. In April 2009, the board of aldermen voted 6-to-1 to turn down the plan, citing citizen concerns about the number of traffic lanes.
Mayor Mark Chilton said the two-lane plan addresses the major point of contention with the project.
“The DOT has come a really, really long way toward what the community said it wanted,†Chilton said Tuesday.
The project, he said, will go a long way to improve safety at BPW Club Road for residents of nearby apartment and senior-care facilities.
“People will finally be able to walk to where they’re going on a sidewalk instead of a path,†Chilton said.
Mills, who has been part of the Smith Level Road discussions since signing on as District 7 engineer in 1999, said he was glad to see the project moving ahead.
“I think it’s a good example of the DOT listening to the community and trying to accommodate what they say,†he said.
Mills said the reduction of the travel lanes would lower the cost of the project. The DOT still plans to acquire enough right-of-way for a four-lane configuration to one day be built, he said.
“It’s cheaper for us to do that now,†Mills said. He emphasized that any effort to widen the road to four lanes would have to start with the town.
“That is the town’s decision,†he said.
Chilton said one section of the plan the town will want to take a hard look at is how the divided road will affect traffic circulation in the Berryhill neighborhood. The intersection at Willow Oak Lane and Smith Level will convert to right in/right out only, which is likely to increase the use of the neighborhoods entrance on BPW Club Road.
Should the town agree to the DOT’s plan, Mills said right-of-way acquisition could start in six to seven months, with construction beginning about two years after that.
The use of Smith Level as a major entryway has been in the town’s transportation planning strategy since 1980. In 1992, DOT presented a plan for a project that would widen the road from the Morgan Creek bridge to the Chatham County line at Starpoint.
With concerns raised about the impact on the University Lake watershed, the scope of the project was reduced in 1997 to include the stretch from the bridge to Damascus Church Road and dropped back to Rock Haven Road in 1998, when DOT proposed a five-lane plan. After further revisions, aldermen and the DOT presented the plan to residents in 2001, but it was rejected over concerns that it was too wide. Subsequent efforts to reach agreement in 2002, 2005 and last year also failed to find a compromise.