No rational person wants to sit down and read the “Greensboro Department of Transportation Annual Report 2018-2019,” but it does have some interesting highlights.
For all you folks who complain about the traffic in Greensboro, and it’s a either a surprisingly large number or a surprisingly vocal few, according to national surveys you’d have more to complain about if you moved anywhere else in the country.
Waze, a navigation app owned by Google, ranked Greensboro No. 1 city in the nation to drive and Livability.com was a little more ebullient ranking Greensboro No. 1 “Awesome City with Little to No Traffic.”
On the Urban Loop front, the section from Battleground to Lawndale is “expected to be open to traffic December 2019.” And the final section from Lawndale to US 29 is projected to be open by November 2022.
Greensboro Department of Transportation (GDOT) Director Adam Fischer, who is retiring at the end of the month, noted that, 32 years ago when he came to work for the City of Greensboro, one of his first projects was on the environmental study for the Urban Loop. Although he didn’t quite get it finished while working for the city, the end is in sight and Greensboro has done much better at getting its urban loop completed than some cities in North Carolina.
A long awaited project by those who frequent downtown Greensboro is the conversion of Greene Street from one way to two way, and according to the annual report that project is actually under design. At the same time the street is converted to two way, it will also be streetscaped with street trees, new lighting and such. Fischer said that construction could start as early as this fall and by December 2020 Greene Street should be open for business in both directions.
A project on the North Carolina Department of Transportation list for Greensboro is to reconfigure the Battleground Avenue, Lawndale Avenue, Westover Terrace, Cornwallis Drive intersection, if that can be called an intersection. But that area from Fernwood Drive to Wendover Avenue is to be reconfigured. It would seem the design on that project might take some time.
The report also notes that the city currently has 13 electric buses in service and will have 16 on the road by end of the year, making Greensboro’s fleet of electric buses the second largest on the East Coast.
