NCDOT, Buc-ee's looking at road improvements before mega-store's arrival in Mebane
NCDOT did a traffic study and found certain improvements need to be made around the 34-acre site before construction can begin and Buc-ee’s can open.
NCDOT did a traffic study and found certain improvements need to be made around the 34-acre site before construction can begin and Buc-ee’s can open.
NCDOT did a traffic study and found certain improvements need to be made around the 34-acre site before construction can begin and Buc-ee’s can open.
Now that we know North Carolina’s first Buc-ee’s is coming to Mebane, many are wondering when the travel plaza will open.
City and state officials are looking at how to change the traffic flow along Trollingwood Hawfields Road, near the I-40/85 interchange.
"The common complaint was traffic," Mebane Mayor Ed Hooks said.
With the arrival of Buc-ee’s in the Mebane area comes changes that need to be made to Trollingwood Hawfields Road in order to welcome the mega-store’s arrival.
"They're working to do to improve Trollingwood from 119 to Gibson Road; we're gonna see a lot of development in this area in the next five years and dot is trying to get ahead of that," Mayor Hooks said.
NCDOT did a traffic study and found certain improvements need to be made around the 34-acre site before construction can begin and Buc-ee’s can open.
"There will need to be interchange improvements at the Trollingwood I-40 85 interchange, which consists of additional lanes at the interchange and on the ramps, and actually included a need to widen the existing bridge overpass over the interstate and then additional through lanes on Trollingwood Hawfield Road as well as additional signalization," Chuck Edwards, NCDOT Division Engineer, said.
Mayor Hooks says these improvements are especially needed with the amount of traffic the travel plaza will bring.
"One of the most glaring things is Trollingwood today by the NCDOT's standards is rated as a 'C' road," Hooks said. "With the billions of dollars of updates that Buc-ee’s is doing along with NCDOT, we're seeing this road improve to a 'B', and that's good."
Right now, the city is waiting for the engineering construction drawings and NCDOT's final road plans before construction can begin.
"Once those two things are in our office they go through kind of a TRC (Technical Review Committee) to make sure they're meeting all our standards," Mayor Hooks said. "We're expecting that sometime in the May timeframe and hopefully the groundbreaking can start as soon as June or July."