Road Painting Starts on West Franklin, East Main Streets After Repaving

With repaving finished along the main downtown roads in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, the town governments say the next step of painting road markings has begun.

Town officials said the North Carolina Department of Transportation submitted its pavement marking schedule for the West Franklin Street and East Main Street repaving project to Chapel Hill last week. According to the schedule, the contractor began permanent pavement markings on Sunday night, July 31. Work will continue nightly through Friday, August 12.

During that time, parking could potentially be “intermittently” closed off, according to the town, though the contractor has been instructed to minimize any closures or disruptions.

The repaving project got underway in late April of this year, with more extensive work beginning just after UNC’s graduation weekend in early May. That work included the removal of bollards on extended sidewalks, which Chapel Hill installed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to allow for more outdoor seating and protection of pedestrians.

“We found that during the pandemic when we had the expanded sidewalks — which we want to put back — we didn’t need two lanes going each way,” Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger told 97.9 The Hill on Thursday. “It slowed the cars down… look for good changes to come.”

Following that step, the actual repaving of the downtown roads got underway. The Town of Chapel Hill and a state contractor split the workload, which was completed in late July.

One of the project’s main goals is lane reallocation on West Franklin and East Main Streets in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. The new design of the streets will include new bike lanes, with on-street parking separating the bike lanes from traffic. Hemminger said, however, new developments in the project may mean the bike lanes will not be curb-running despite initial plans for that design.

“We’re still kind of gauging that right now,” she said. “[The North Carolina Department of Transportation] only allows a certain way [of painting bike lanes] at this point in time. So we’re gonna have to live with what they put out there right now, and we’re gonna gauge how well it works and then see if we’re keeping it that way.”

Carrboro Mayor Damon Seils told 97.9 The Hill good progress had been made on his town’s portion of the street, while also noting additional traffic signal reprogramming work remained to be done.

“That one’s more on the Carrboro town staff side of things,” he said. “But it should all be done this summer, preferably before classes start up again on [UNC’s] campus.”

UNC’s first day of classes is scheduled for Monday, August 15 — three days after NCDOT’s projected completion date for pavement marking.

Featured image via Town of Chapel Hill

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Road Painting Starts on West Franklin, East Main Streets After Repaving

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