Synchronized Street Coming to Garner / US 401
RTA members,
NCDOT announced this week that traffic flow and safety will be improving on a primary corridor south of the capital city.
US 401 in Garner is a vital roadway for both the town and for southern Wake County travelers broadly. As growth has continued in our market, so has traffic along the corridor.
Fortunately, NCDOT has a plan to install several “reduced conflict intersections” in a one mile plus stretch of US 401, just south of the 70/401 split, from south of the Mechanical Blvd./Garner Station Rd. intersection to south of the Old Stage Rd./Farm Rd. intersection in the Garner area. The installation of two or more of these enhanced signalized intersections along a corridor creates a Synchronized Street design.
These modified intersections will redirect side street travelers in order to improve flow along the US 401 mainline. The design requires all side street movements to turn right onto US 401, and then have those travelers turn left or make a U-turn at the next intersection if they were originally destined for either a left turn or crossing 401. The redirection of side street movements severs the connection between the two directions of travel, which allows them to be synchronized independently and simultaneously — hence the Synchronized Street name.
The regional business community has been a strong supporter of the synchronized street design along major through travel corridors for more than a decade. In fact, we developed a one-pager summarizing the benefits of synchronized streets through the I-40 Regional Partnership back in 2015. The emailed NCDOT press release on the improvement linked to that I-40 Partnership overview in highlighting the benefits of the design.
Thank you to NCDOT for advancing this important corridor improvement, for safety, efficiency, and congestion relief.
Let’s get moving,
Joe
