A plan to replace the traffic signals with roundabouts at Peace Haven Road and U.S. 421 has stalled because of a lack of money to pay for the project.
The project is on hold for at least three years and may never get done if the state Department of Transportation's money problems continue, said Pat Ivey, a division engineer for the DOT.
"It's basically a funding issue," he said.
The project is relatively small by DOT standards -- about $900,000 -- but finding even that much money in the cash-strapped budget is difficult, Ivey said.
In some cases, the state's spot-safety fund has been used to build roundabouts. But those funds are usually reserved to fix problems where accidents frequently occur. Although congestion at the intersections is a problem, there haven't been many crashes there, Ivey said.
And because the project never got past the preliminary design phase, it wasn't considered a "shovel-ready" project that would have been eligible for federal stimulus funds earlier this year.
The roundabout proposal emerged in 2007 as a temporary fix for the queuing problem at the lights on Peace Haven Road, particularly during rush hours.
The idea was that the roundabouts would do a better job of keeping traffic moving until the interchange was replaced when the Northern Beltway was put in place.
But because of the lack of funds, there is not a timetable for either the roundabouts or the Northern Beltway, Ivey said.
The state DOT has been in a budget shortfall for several years now. Money for Division 9 -- which includes Davidson, Davie, Forsyth, Rowan and Stokes counties -- was reduced for the year by 35 percent in November 2008, as a result of lower-than-expected revenues from gasoline and highway-use taxes.
According to a 2007 study of traffic volume, 20,000 vehicles passed through the northern part of the interchange each day, and 13,000 passed through the southern part of the interchange.
pgarber@wsjournal.com
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