It’s the classic short-term inconvenience for the long-term benefit.
For the next eight weeks, crews working in conjunction with the state Department of Transportation are working to move traffic on U.S. 70 from Banks School Road to Innovation Way, to an alternate route which will link the highway with a proposed western end of the C.F. Harvey Parkway.
“They’re going to migrate that to the new highway that runs behind Affordable Care,” Lenoir County Commissioner J. Mac Daughety said in Thursday’s joint city-county government meeting. “There will be lane changes, so you will need to be aware of that. Part of that is Part A of the parkway process.”
The entire process of building the Harvey Parkway west from its current end point at U.S. 250 will take several more months to complete.
“When they finish all this, which should be at the end of this year, they should have the transition of the East-West (U.S.) 70 lanes, which is what runs in front of Electrolux,” Daughety said.
NCDOT has the first week’s work getting underway March 18. According to the agency, during the first week westbound cars on U.S. 70 will be forced into one lane as work crews begin the process, which will eventually end with new paving, signals, signage, drainage and a noise wall.
The construction is necessarily going to cause some problems for business in that corridor as construction gets underway.
“It’s certainly a concern any time traffic patterns are changed, however we recognize it as being progress,” Kinston/Lenoir County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Laura Lee Sylvester said. “And it’s just that the end result would be something that is beneficial, not only to the community, but to those businesses as well.
“I believe that there are some challenges that certain people are working on with NCDOT, and I believe that (Lenoir County Economic Development Director) Mark Pope is heading up that effort to make sure that there’s a good result for the community, NCDOT and the businesses that will be affected.”
Ultimately, the parkway system will provide a reliable transportation outlet for the Global TransPark on the western side, and there are also plans in the works for a rail link that will connect the GTP with the Port of Norfolk in Virginia. Ports in North Carolina aren’t able to accept shipments from the newer, larger, Panamax ships.
Eventually, it’s all supposed to link into a system of roads and proposed Interstates between Lenoir, Pitt, Wayne and Wilson counties, as a project of the Quad East government and business partnership.
Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 or wes.wolfe@kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.
Breakout Box
Upcoming Construction
Where: U.S. 70, Banks School Road to just east of Innovation Way
Begins: March 18
Projected End: May 13