Projects proposed to relieve headaches for drivers along busy Wilmington roads
WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — If you’ve ever driven in Wilmington, it’s very likely you’re familiar with College Road.
With an estimated 50,000 drivers using it daily, navigating it can be a frustrating experience. However, there could soon be improvements.
“With the congestion, that’s where you get the road rage,” driver Dori Capps said. “You get people cutting people off, people yelling, screaming. It causes more wrecks.”
“Rush hour time. I mean, it takes forever to get anywhere,” driver Jacob Childress said. “I was actually rear ended about two weeks ago on College Road. Guy playing on his cell phone, that was fun. Normally traffic is horrible, people just don’t know how to drive that well to be honest.”
The amount of traffic on the road has grown overtime. That’s why the North Carolina Department of Transportation has some changes planned for the heavily traveled road.
“There’s not that many North South routes in Wilmington, so there’s not a whole lot of options for people,” David Leonard, NCDOT, said. “You have a lot of businesses on the corridor, a lot of signals, a lot of lanes. So it’s just trying to do what we can with what we got there and trying to make it a lot better.”
There are a total of six projects. They include improvements around New Centre Drive, converting the Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway intersection to an interchange, and a possible interchange at College and Oleander.
Some drivers agree something needs to be done as our population grows.
“More and more residents are coming down,” Capps said. “Not only with the residents but the tourists that come down on holidays. It is jam packed, congested, sometimes it is bumper to bumper, not even at five o’clock. It used to be only at five o’clock, but now it’s all hours of the day.”
A majority of these projects have already been funded, but it will take some time before construction begins. Leonard says only one has not been funded yet.
The majority of these projects are expected to start in 2024 and could take up to three years to complete.
Click here to read more about the projects.
