Standard is 12’ you can get away with 11’ in urban areas. Shoulders should be 14’ outside and 10-12’ inside.
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They need to stop expaning more lanes and get commuter rail built. This is insanity. We’ll end up like ATL in 10-15 years.
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…and maybe a compulsive obsession? I would not be surprised if NCDOT staffers think politicians want them to make their own cash, and feels like this could appease fiscal conservatives after what happened last time as well as people no longer paying car-related taxes due to the pandemic.
But I agree; the RTA and Aecom’s idea is so much more practical and useful than express lanes! Express lanes in other cities are so popular that they get congested too (yay induced demand), yet have been politically toxic in Charlotte and outrage from automatic surcharges in DC. One of the Triangle’s selling points versus other cities is that we don’t have that sort of traffic drama; it feels kinda stupid to negate that like this.
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Long story. When NCDOT built I-40 between Durham and Raleigh they built it as a 4 lane highway but very quickly it became overwhelmed with traffic. They hastily widened it to 8 lanes, but that bridge somehow didn’t get the full treatment.
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Yeah the interstate system left Raleigh off the map entirely at first…40 from the split with 85 near Durham, over to Raleigh and then down East to the beaches and Wilmington, didn’t come for decades after I85 through NC was built…40 to Raleigh was built well into the 1970s and 1980s. It was too little, too late, and with Raleigh’s growth, they’ve been playing catch-up ever since. Extension to Wilmington didn’t even happen until the 1990’s.
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And to top that off, sections of 40 between Mebane and 15-501 (the major arterial/quasi-highway between Chapel Hill and Durham) still only has 2 lanes per direction -though NCDOT’s budgeting to correct this in FY’23 or '24. This lane reduction causes major congestions and dangerous merging behaviors, making it especially annoying to drive there around rush hour and college move-in days.
…not that I’m justifying any more lane increases beyond three lanes per direction, though. You can only widen your highways so far in the name of traffic before you start to act like Texas; I think we have to draw the line somewhere, and the proportion of lanes we have now between Chapel Hill and the eastern 40-440 split is a good mix.
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You don’t like the 9 lane stretch of i-75 north of Atlanta?! 
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Man, I avoid Cobb County like the plague whenever I’m in Atlanta
Real talk, though: I drove to Atlanta quite a bit with my family as a kid, and I’m like 90% convinced I got my hate for driving from all the reckless driving on the Perimeter. If I die and Hell is real, I’m sure one of its circles is just 285 during rush hour, except you’d have to travel around it on a rusty tricycle.
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Haha! Every time I go back to Atlanta now, I’m like holy crap his is ridiculous. It’s such a breeze getting around town here in comparison.
We have some mobility flaws / gaps in Raleigh but I’ll take it any day
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Been there and not sure if that’s a hi-way or the wide open asphalt plains of north ALT 
addition: not mean it’s empty, just that it’s like wide plains with 10,000 wagons swerving around on them.
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Wanted to develop my idea discussed here a little bit more!
The main goal of this is to improve safety, mobility and connectivity to and from Downtown from the North and South.
Map Posting as link now since it won’t embed
Starting with the south, lets look at volumes. I wish I had Peak Hour, TMC and Classification numbers but AADTs will do! ArcGIS Web Application
So for this I’m counting Lake Wheeler, S Saunders, Wilmington, Hammond, and Rock Quarry as our South Entering / Exiting numbers. Combining the AADT of these five corridors we’re looking at around 121,000 vehicles per day. A pretty hefty number for traditional streets.
If we were able to construct a southern approach Limited access parkway (similar to the stubby I-175 and I-375 in St. Petersburg, FL0 on the existing Wilmington St corridor from S Saunders St, create a North facing interchange at I-40 to MLK Drive, we could greatly reduce the pressure on the four other approaches and give them road diets / pedestrian / dive development etc give them all they need. I wish I could project how many vehicles this would reduce from the other roads, but without TMC and Peak hour numbers I’m not even going to throw a number out there because it’d probably be wrong! But I’d think maybe half off of S Saunders.
Besides the ramps with 40, this would actually be incredibly easy to construct because
1 - the road is already in place
2 - there’s barely any intersections that would be affected
3 - minimal ROW needs
4 - No neighborhood disruptions
As discussed over in the BRT feed earlier, there’s some plan / desire to re think the MLK / West St / S Saunders area as can be seen in the map as well.
Let’s talk about the North now. Looking at those AADTs
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34,000 Wake Forest Rd (S of 440)
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27,000 Atlantic Ave
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37,500 Capital Blvd (S of 440, jumps to an insane 85,000 N of 440)
The Capital Blvd Corridor study has some ideas, but I’m thinking to take things a step further by turning the Mainline to the NCDOT definition of expressway, basically just remove the three signals between Downtown and 440. Also, the West St Extension tying to Wake Forest Rd and connecting Wake Forest Rd to downtown via an extension to Salisbury / Wilmington. Hopefully this could drive a seamless development corridor and maybe the city could acquire the Railyard! I’m probably dreaming here, but hey, someone has to have the idea.
But again here, the main goal is creating a safe, efficient route for all modes to and from the northern extents of Downtown while also creating two corridors on either side of Capital to drive development.
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To make your Google Maps embed show, try just inserting the URL into your post without any tags wrapping around it. Like this:
The main goal of this is [...] North and South.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1jkcfP8u_RLu1y9UFe0pxYB7m_2-B4CCM&usp=sharing
Starting with the south,[...]
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Haha damn engineer and can’t even code stuff. But I’m pretty sure that’s how I entered it and it still wouldn’t work. Just a big empty space.
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I noticed the link you dropped it had ‘/edit/’ in it. To share a custom map, one method is grab the embed code, like this:
<iframe src="https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=1jkcfP8u_RLu1y9UFe0pxYB7m_2-B4CCM" width="640" height="480"></iframe>
but if I drop in just the url?
https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=1jkcfP8u_RLu1y9UFe0pxYB7m_2-B4CCM
That didn’t work. In the map editor, can you click on Share then make the map public?
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There we go! Haha thanks, I don’t think I had officially published the map even though it was public
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OK I think I got it. Standby, should be working in 15-20 min. No need to change what you’re doing.
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OK so now you just drop in the whole embed code and it works. Carry on!
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Looks like the current Speedway at 2600/2604 South Saunders Street is about to be upgraded with a larger building. It should definitely clean up this corner. It appears that Golden Seafood and Chicken restaurant is going to be demolished in the process.
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Welcome aboard! Looks like a typical interstate side travel center. They’ll probably make a killing. $$$
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