Planners craft a vision for US 70 in East Durham that doesn’t involve a freeway
Transportation planners are seeking feedback on two schemes for overhauling U.S. 70 between East Durham and the Wake County line, but an option many people favor isn’t one of them.
The Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization has come up with two variations on what it calls a boulevard. In both cases, U.S. 70 would remain four lanes but with new sidewalks, crosswalks and multi-use paths for cyclists and pedestrians and more room for bus stops. There would also be new traffic signals where drivers would make U-turns across the median instead of left turns at intersections.
One of the options also includes a network of parallel roads and overpasses to provide access to homes and businesses and reduce direct turns onto and off of U.S. 70. The goal of both proposals is to take a four-mile stretch of highway built exclusively for cars and provide some accommodation for people who aren’t driving.
But by trying to make U.S. 70 easier for pedestrians and cyclists to navigate, critics say, the DCHC is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. The problem with U.S. 70, they say, is too few lanes to handle too many cars that get jammed at traffic lights.
“I feel like in the future 70 is going to have to be a six-lane freeway,” said Charles Clifford, who crosses U.S. 70 between his home and work in Research Triangle Park. “If I’m a pedestrian or cyclist, I’m not going to cross 70.”
A six-lane freeway is what the N.C. Department of Transportation proposed for this stretch of U.S. 70 and presented to the public in 2018. The intersection of South Miami Boulevard and Sherron Road, which frequently gets backed up in all directions, would become an interchange, and new service roads would need to be built to access homes and businesses.
NCDOT also plans to convert a section of U.S. 70 into a freeway through Brier Creek in Raleigh, just west of Interstate 540. The Durham project would extend the freeway from the Wake County line to Interstate 885, also known as the Durham East End Connector.
The DCHC once endorsed NCDOT’s freeway plan. But last year, the organization’s board set new priorities that include spending less on new and wider highways and more on cyclists, pedestrians and transit riders. When financial challenges, including rising costs for construction, forced NCDOT to delay the U.S. 70 freeway project, DCHC decided to explore alternatives.
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While neither boulevard plan would add travel lanes to U.S. 70, the elimination of left turns at the intersections will improve the flow of traffic, says Weston Murphy, part of the team at STV, the engineering firm that put together the two alternatives.
“It’s going to give you lot more green time to get more traffic through there,” Murphy said. “Better than the existing, but not as good as a freeway.”
DCHC to hold 2 more public meetings
Murphy was speaking at a public meeting Saturday, the second of four DCHC is holding to answer questions about the plans and collect feedback. Nearly everyone who attended said they thought a freeway would make more sense or questioned why it wasn’t one of the options for comparison.
NCDOT has suspended work on the freeway plan while DCHC completes the U.S. 70 Corridor Study. The department has money for preliminary engineering work but none for construction. It currently estimates the freeway would cost $307 million, said spokesman Aaron Moody.
DCHC hasn’t calculated how much either of its boulevard plans would cost to carry out, though neither would be as expensive as a freeway, said Doug Plachcinski, the organization’s executive director. Plachcinski said it would be “at least 10 years” before construction could begin on a boulevard.
At some point, NCDOT and DCHC will need to reconcile their competing visions for U.S. 70. For now, the two organizations say they are cooperating with each other.
“I don’t think we view it as a competition. It’s a long process to look at alternatives,” Plachcinski said. “This is a complicated corridor that affects a lot of people.”
The next meetings for the U.S. 70 Corridor Study will be Thursday, Aug. 31, from 6 to 7 p.m. at the P.O.O.F. Training and Event Center, 1100 North Miami Blvd., and Thursday, Sept. 7, from 12 to 7 p.m. at the Bethesda Ruritan Club, 1714 South Miami Blvd. The public can also learn more and comment online at www.dchcmpo.org/what-we-do/programs-plans/special-studies/us-70-corridor-study.
This story was originally published August 29, 2023 at 12:40 PM.
