Median scrapped, but narrowing lanes from four to two still proposed for area near downtown
North Carolina’s state transportation department has unfurled a new version of a plan to eliminate some of the travel lanes from an accident-prone stretch of South Church Street in Burlington.
Colin Mellor, a project manager with the NCDOT, appeared before Burlington’s city council on Monday to present this new vision for the portion of South Church Street that runs from Fifth Street to Tarleton Avenue.
Originally billed as a “road widening project,” this venture had come to have the somewhat counterintuitive aim of eliminating some travel lanes when it was previously pitched to the council by a team of consultants in the state agency’s employ.
Under this plan, which the consultants had christened a “road diet,” the four travel lanes that currently span this section of Church Street would be pared down to two. In the meantime, a 17.5-foot median was to have been built between the two remaining lanes in order to limit potentially hazardous left turns to signalized intersections.
During his appearance at a city council work session on Monday, Mellor acknowledged that he and his colleagues haven’t abandoned the “road diet” concept in their latest plans for the roadway.
“DOT is normally known for adding lanes,” he conceded. “I was reminded that it is ironic that we’re reducing lanes. But there are facts to back this up. . . Safety is a major concern. . . There’s a lot of rear end and left-turn collisions and traffic in the turn lane.”
Mellor added that, according to the Federal Highway Administration, a reduction in lanes can reduce crashes by 19 to 47 percent, depending on the setting of a particular roadway. He noted, however, that in this case, the NCDOT has also been mindful of feedback from Burlington’s emergency services, which had objected to the introduction of a nearly continuous median within an area that can, in a pinch, serve as a travel lane for police, firefighters, and emergency medical services.
Mellor said that, in addition to the median’s elimination, the city’s emergency services had suggested five-foot wide shoulders to provide additional access for emergency traffic. He added that change could be readily accommodated without eliminating the “multimodal paths” for pedestrians and cyclists that would otherwise fill the margins of the road’s right-of-way. Mellor also assured the council that the proposed configuration will be more than adequate for the amount of traffic along this stretch of South Church Street.
“The two-lane section, either with the median cut out or the turn lane in the middle, accommodates the traffic today,” he added, “and the forecasted traffic for the design year, which is 2050.”
Mellor nevertheless added that, even with the center lane’s reinstatement, he and his colleagues may still have to make modifications to prevent left turn lanes in certain high-accident areas.
Mellor’s revised plan for this proposed “road diet” was warmly received by heads of both Burlington’s police and fire departments during the city council’s work session.
Matt Lawrence, the city’s fire chief, conceded that the DOT’s engineers seem to have cleared up the concerns that his own agency had with the original plan.
“Initially, the raised median did provide us concerns,” Lawrence recalled, “and it reduced side street access…But from our standpoint, as we sit currently, it’s as good as we can ask for.”
The latest plans, likewise, got a figurative “ten four” from Alan Balog, Burlington’s chief of police.
“The new designs from DOT have been great,” Balog insisted, “and they’ve aligned with the conversations that we’ve had before.”
As a final note, Mellor informed the council that he and his colleagues are still soliciting feedback about the proposed overhaul as they look forward to right-of-way acquisition in January of 2028.
“It’s not a done deal in that we’re still looking for input,” he said. “But I would like to finish our planning document next summer…My charge to you guys tonight is to let us know your concerns with the project and with the tweak that we’ve made.”
Read the newspaper’s editorial views on the DOT proposal: Closing busy traffic lanes in Burlington is just plain dumb http://Closing busy traffic lanes in Burlington is just plain dumb
