Skip to main content

NCDOT Meets with Residents about Greensboro Urban Loop Noise

Image
By
Don't expect a lot of "Kumbaya" moments during tonight's public meetingabout traffic noise and the city's western loop.

Some residents along the 7.5-mile route are hoping a recent review by the state Department of Transportation will result in more noise walls being built between their neighborhoods and the new interstate bypass.

The article goes on to say its doubtful NCDOT will provide more noise walls for residents bordering the new leg of the Greensboro Urban Loop (I-40/I-73). They say legally they are not responsible for providing sound walls for people who built houses after the project was announced back in 1996. Some residents cry foul saying either NCDOT was not honest about constructing the road, calling it Painter Blvd. which implied to some a 4-lane surface roadway not a 6-8 lane freeway. Others suggest the noise analysis done for the road was flawed either due to bad design or an undercount of potential traffic, particularly trucks, using the road. NCDOT in response said they indicated all along that the route would be an interstate highway.

Story: Greensboro News & Record

Commentary:
It's easy to feel sorry for some of these people who are truly impacted by the noise. I spent one summer house-sitting. The house was about 1/2 mile from I-40 and the noise of trucks often woke me up at night. Certainly, NCDOT has had its share of under-counting urban loop traffic (e.g., I-485) so it is possible this is the major reason for the noise problems. All this, however, doesn't absolve people from some responsibility since they moved into an area where they were told a highway was being constructed, if they didn't ask what exact type of highway, this is not NCDOT's fault. Certainly plans were available for residents in the area to look at. So there's probably enough blame to go around.

One possible way to at least reduce the truck traffic would be to put up a sign recommending trucks use the Business 40 route to US 220 back to the SE part of the Loop (I-40/85). NCDOT might worry though that the trucks would stay on Business 40 to Business 85 and through Death Valley increasing traffic through that area again (of course, some traffic probably does this now anyway knowing that the route is shorter). Maybe this can serve as another catalyst to make Business 40 and 3di interstate at least to US 220, a spur of I-40 for trucks to follow. Then again an even digit I-73 3di which would take Business 40 then US 220 back to the Loop might work better. I will be interested in what is reported about the meeting tomorrow.
Labels:

Comments

Bob Malme said…
An update. Needless to say NCDOT was not sympathetic to the 200 or so people who showed up for the meeting. They told them, as expected, that they could not build any more noise walls. They could, though, plant more trees to provide an increased buffer between the freeway and the neighboring houses. For a news video story of the meeting go to:
http://www.wxii12.com/news/16373394/detail.html
5:53 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

By
  There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population.  The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t
Post a Comment
Read more

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two
1 comment
Read more

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third
Post a Comment
Read more