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107-74 connector should be moved south
To the Editor:
For years Sylva officials failed to plan for increased traffic, failed to use opportunities to improve the Business 23/N.C. 107 intersection and engaged in thoughtless land use along N.C. 107.
For instance, when the Ford dealership at the intersection was vacant for years, Sylva didn’t acquire it and reserve it for improvement of the intersection. Instead, they issued a variance so that a drug store could be built there. Also, with congestion on 107 critical, they allowed two big box stores and a hotel to locate in the corridor.
Years ago, Western Carolina University initiated its plan to increase the student enrolment to 15,000. The student population is now several times the population of Sylva. They generate traffic. Faculty and staff, many of whom drive in from other cities and counties, generate a heavy volume of traffic, and many pass through the Business 23/107 intersection and through the 107 corridor.
Basically, the problems caused by volumes of rush-hour traffic at the intersection and the rush-hour congestion on N.C. 107 result from two things: Sylva officials’ lack of planning and irresponsible land use, and WCU’s plan to increase the size of the university to two and a half times what it was 20 years ago, without a plan to run a connector to U.S. 74 directly from the university in order to handle the traffic created by this growing “city.”
Eventually officials sought solutions to congestion and deteriorating traffic flow. Too little, too late. In the face of irresponsible land use, and without timely and effective planning having gone before, the solutions now proposed can’t do more than attempt to mitigate the results from failures mentioned above, and it won’t be pretty. Work zones will make delays and aggravations worse. Now the tendency will be to choose quick, dirty and cheap remedies.
We need to go back a few years, though, to the first supposed solution. Many of us feel that what was really proposed was a highway of convenience for WCU, disguised as a solution to traffic problems. It seemed that one state agency would produce this highway for another state agency. The project was called the Southern Loop.
Wastefully, its feasibility was studied for five years only to conclude the obvious, that it is not a good idea to run a highway through historic Webster and along the Tuckaseigee River.
Even if the Southern Loop had been put in, it would have had a bad effect on local business and traffic, functioning as a second bypass of Sylva and Dillsboro. With the bypass at Exit 81, traffic at least sees that Dillsboro and Sylva exist. The Southern Loop would have encouraged traffic to fly right on by, with drivers taking the first available exit and the shortest route on their travels from U.S. 74 to U.S. 441 and vice versa.
Vehicles that might have left the Loop at the midway point for Sylva and Dillsboro would have had to travel the problematic corridor to get there. Appropriate exits would have been ignored or never have been seen.
Fortunately, half of the Southern Loop was dropped. The remaining half was renamed the N.C. 107 connector and purported to be a solution for congestion, although it will not result in a net reduction in traffic on N.C. 107.
Though supposedly down-graded, it has not been, since it will be a two-lane road on a four-lane right of way, having all of the impact of a four-lane highway. Furthermore, I’m told that after wreaking havoc on homes and landscape with a four-lane right of way, there is a possibility that the road may never become a four-lane highway. In addition, several of the alternatives being studied do not even connect with N.C. 107.
If it does connect to N.C. 107, it will make another T-intersection at a well-traveled point.
The present study should be dropped. Instead, plan a connector that begins at N.C. 107 immediately south of WCU. A T-intersection there will be at a much less generally traveled point.
More importantly, outgoing traffic not intentionally destined for a point north of the university will never use a road north of the university, and traffic coming from U.S. 74 to WCU will go directly there.
Elly Davey
Cullowhee
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