I attended the Regional Roads Committee meeting yesterday. This is a consortium of seventeen Chambers of Commerce which meets quarterly. Yesterday we heard from the North Carolina Department of Transportation District 10 representative, Richard Hancock, and District 12 representative, Daniel Grissom. These two districts represent the Charlotte region, Lincoln, Iredell, Cabarrus, and surrounding areas. I thought I would share a few updates on roads in our area.
I-77 improvements from Brookshire to Catawba Avenue (exit 28): The conversion of the HOV lanes to HOT lanes (toll lanes for single person occupied cars) and adding a lane in each direction from I-485 to Catawba is expected to begin in 2015. This is approximately at $65 million project.
Brawley School Road: There is good news in store for residents on, what one member called, Lake Norman’s longest cul-de-sac road. Brawley School Road widening to Williamson Road should be complete next month. A few improvements here and there will be ongoing, but all four lanes should be running smoothly. The Williamson to Talbert leg, including the interchange at I-77 will be complete in November 2013. The contractor is actually ahead of that schedule now. The Talbert to Highway 21 leg is not funded, so don’t hold your breath for that to happen soon. The Brawley School Road and I-77 interchange will be what they call a “SPUI”. For those of you who are not road geeks, that means it will look much like the I-77 and Tyvola interchange.
Completion of I-485: The final leg of I-485 should be completed in 2014. You will start to see construction on that next month. In the south, two more lanes to I-485 will be added and completed in 2014 as well. As a side note, the I-85 and I-485 interchange is unreal! It will have seventeen bridges! It is called a turbine interchange. Here is a link to what it will look like: http://www.ncdot.gov/projects/CharlotteOuterLoop/
Catawba bridge: This is the first of four Diverging Diamond Interchanges (DDI) planned in the state. If you have not seen what it looks like, check out this video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF9Cx0pMsbI. Ours will be a little smaller than what you see in the link, but the idea is the same. The interchange redesign is scheduled to begin next year. Sadly, the “bookends” at Highway 21/Catawba and Torrence Chapel/Catawba will not be part of the project. Adding those intersection improvements to the bridge project would delay the bridge redesign. The DOT is well aware that those intersections must be redesigned for the DDI to work properly. There is some discussion of tying those improvements into the I-77 widening project, but no decisions have been made yet.
Between the two districts represented, there are somewhere in the range of over $1.2 billion worth of road improvements scheduled through 2013. So much is needed, but these are some pretty good starts!
If you have any questions, feel free to give me a call 704-996-6000. And remember, while transportation is important to me, helping people with their real estate needs is my passion and my career! If you know anyone thinking of buying or selling real estate, please let me know.
