Gribblenation

The highway bill known as the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act) is passed and signed into law.  The 1,305 page bill has a lot items to it and future impacts to transportation in North Carolina are inside the bill.  This includes the creation of two new Interstate corridors and the extension of another.  As for the numbering of the new corridors, I'll discuss in a later post. High Priority Corridor 81: The first is the creation of High Priority Corridor 81 - this lists as including US 117 and Interstate 795 and runs from US 70 in Goldsboro southwards to Interstate 40 in Faison.  In short, this will extend I-795 from Goldsboro to I-40 in Faison.  North Carolina has had on their agenda for numerous years making a freeway route from I-40 northwards to I-95 in Wilson.  The current Interstate 795 is the north half of this. The southern half consists of US 117.  A number of steps are needed to make this section ...

US 117 Connector - North Originally uploaded by Adam's Journey The four lane highway from I-40 near Faison to US 117 near Mount Olive has recently been signed as US 117 Connector. This is the first time I have seen a 'Connector' route signed. Where else are 'Connector' routes signed?

Not only was this the first roadtrip of 2010, this was also my first use of twitter on trips. I had been discussing with a few folks the idea of using twitter to post real time information from noteworthy to obscure on roadtrips . We'll see how it goes. If you'd like to follow us on twitter, here's the link . To see the entire trip on flickr (over 100 photos) head here . For the roadtrip , Brian LeBlanc and Joe Babyak joined me and we met up in Kinston to explore areas of Eastern NC. The deciding factor for starting at Kinston was that North Carolina's newest state route, NC 148, was just recently created nearby. And it is indeed signed. NC 148 follows the CF Harvey Parkway from US 258 eastwards to NC 58 north of Kinston . In a nutshell, it's the main road through the Global Transpark . The highway is being extended westward to US 70. Prior to checking out NC 148, we walked around Kinston . It was a cold, blustery day and the tempera...

Took a trip into Virginia on Saturday for the first roadtrip of the year. Zigzagged around from Raleigh to Oxford, NC to Boydton, VA to Blackstone, VA ended up in Alberta, (Virginia), and down through Wake Forest. The entire flickr set (51 photos) is here . The first stop is Oxford - which is the Granville County Seat. Zig zagged to US 1 in a small town called Manson, NC. There was this great old gas station there. An old American Oil Company sign. I don't think I have ever seen a gas pump in the United States that was "price in liters" until now! The Pepsi Bottles have to be from around the time NC State won the National Championship in 1983. Now, one of the best surprises of the trip was this old gas and service station on US 1 at the North Carolina/Virginia State Line. Can you imagine driving down US 1, 40 or 50 years ago, on a rainy night and seeing the neon "Virginia" as you ride down the lonely highway? Made it as far north as Burkeville, VA where US 360...

AASHTO SCOH has posted their responses from their October meeting of the Special Committee on U.S, Route Numbering in Hartford on a single Word document, link below. They have not yet posted the documents with specific responses to each application, however. Hopefully these will be posted soon so a better understanding for the decisions can be deciphered. For NC, the results are mixed. They approved the applications for I-440 (dropping it from the I-40 portion of the Beltline) and the application for the US 17 Windsor Bypass. They approved the I-540 and I-140 applications though conditionally, citing the need for a revised application for both, requesting that I-540 be marked Future and possibly a spur (?) and I-140 be revised to designate that route a spur(?). They conditionally approved the I-73 application but also want the application resubmitted to have the route designated Future I-73 'since it is not complete.' They again disapproved the US 117 move back to its original...

Joe Babyak came up from Wilmington on Saturday, and we took a trip along some of the former US Highway alignments in the area. For the entire flickr set (149 photos) go here . We focused on old alignments of US 1 and US 421. US 1 from Apex to Sanford and US 421 from Sanford to Julian (between Liberty and Greensboro). We headed back along what some call the Old Football Road which is known as Greensboro/Chapel Hill Road. With the Raleigh Beltline finally seeing an upgrade in signage, I got hold of two shots of soon to be replaced signs on Western Blvd. Believe it or not. These signs are over top of even older overheads. (Be interesting to read those.) Camera flash through the windshield makes this appear to be button copy. This is an older overhead than the signs in the first photo. Our first stop was Apex. I spent a bit more time in Apex than this spring on the Bike 5 Trip to Wilmington. We walked around taking photos for a good 30-45 minutes. Apex has an intimate and very pop...