City council discusses 4 lanes for new River Road

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Wilmington City Council members are talking about more improvements to River Road.

The section between Motts Creek and Barnards Creek will be closed from early September until Dec. 23 to relocate River Road more inland. This will allow for more development of riverfront areas while redirecting traffic around it.

Councilman Charlie Rivenbark said they originally planned to make the new River Road two lanes and grade another two lanes to add later. Monday morning Rivenbark said council brought up the idea to just go ahead and build all four lanes now.

“It’s our belief that the traffic out there now and what’s going to be brought in by this new development would probably go ahead and warrant the additional two lanes, and what better time to build it then when they are building the first two,” Rivenbark said.

Rivenbark said the issue now is going to be finding money to pay for it. He said council plans to discuss it again before the project gets started in three weeks.