Barriers that had been broken and useless for weeks were made useful again along Interstate 40, the Durham Freeway, U.S. 64 and other busy roads.

"There's still a pretty good size amount of work to be done," Jason Holmes, a Wake County maintenance engineer for the state Department of Transportation, said Thursday. Other Triangle sites on the repair list included I-540 and I-85.

Elderlee Inc., a New York company with a local office in Dunn, has a contract to install and repair guard rails and barriers in Durham, Wake and five other counties that make up DOT's Division Five.

Three people died in a Christmas Day crash in Wendell when a car crossed an unprotected median on U.S. 64. DOT had failed to repair a cable median barrier there that had been damaged in three previous crashes. Transportation Secretary Lyndo Tippett said on Jan. 5 that DOT would start making weekly inspections and prompt repairs to keep median barriers in good shape.

On the map

Tryon Palace and the Carolina Hurricanes make North Carolina history together on the cover of the 2007 State Transportation Map.

Rod Brind'Amour hoists the Stanley Cup (which looks, on the highway map, like a rebuilt automobile transmission) won by his team in 2006. The restored palace in New Bern was home to two colonial governors, William Tryon and Josiah Martin, between 1770 and 1775.

The state map itself is a mix of 21st-century road improvements (the few that we have these days) and obsolete place names from the 19th and early-20th centuries. As part of the ancient history theme, there's a remembrance from Gov. Mike Easley about the time North Carolina claimed to be the "Good Roads State."

The map has been updated this year to show a widened N.C. 55 and new sections of I-540 in Raleigh and N.C. 98 in Wake Forest. It probably will never be updated to reflect the nonexistence of Genlee, Brassfield, Bilboa, Huckleberry Springs, Lowes Grove, Keene and other long-gone whistlestops.

Maybe that's why I like it.

The official state map is free. It's better than the ones you have to pay for -- they get their info from the state version, anyway. Get yours by calling 1(877) 368-4968, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., or click "Maps and Publications" at DOT's Web site, www.ncdot.org.

RBC turnaround

Sports fans in the RBC Center parking lot will have a quick turnaround Saturday, for the second time this season. The NCSU Wolfpack hosts Duke at 3:30 p.m. and the Canes host Tampa Bay at 8:30.

The RBC allows hockey tailgaters into its parking lots three hours before the puck drops, and that will be just about the time the basketball game ends. Wolfpack fan Bucky Coats of Clayton complained that a similar schedule Jan. 6 produced a conflict with incoming hockey traffic, making it difficult for basketball fans to get out of the parking lot.

But Davin Olsen, the RBC general manager, said the early hockey traffic did not cause a problem, and the parking lots were emptied in 20 minutes.

"The amount of people that show up three hours before a game, if it's 100 cars, it's a lot," Olsen said. "Out of 8,000 parking spaces, there's no impact at all. ... On a consistent basis, we empty all our lots in 20 minutes."