The Town of Hillsborough recently reviewed and unanimously endorsed a proposed redesign for South Churton Street that could create a safe, attractive entryway into town.
The street is Hillsborough’s primary north-south corridor, acting as a gateway into town and connecting its neighborhoods to the commercial district. The three-mile road stretches from Interstate 40 to the Eno River, and more than 22,000 vehicles travel it daily. The state-funded redesign seeks to widen South Churton Street in order to relieve traffic congestion and provide north-south pedestrian and bicycle connectivity.
The road currently has a crash rate 1.3 times higher than a similar North Carolina road and offers no amenities for pedestrians and cyclists, which Hillsborough project manager Mike Rutkowski said can be frustrating for the town.
“It’s like the front porch of your house,” he said during the June 10 Board of Commissioners meeting. “It’s got to be beautiful and it’s got to be inviting. It’s got to be safe. That was really our premise as we walked through this.”
The North Carolina Department of Transportation began developing ideas for the state-funded project in 2019, and over the past year, Hillsborough’s project management team regularly collected feedback from stakeholders and community members to create the proposed concept design. The endorsed plan will be shared with the NCDOT in hopes of informing the design and engineering phase.
One aspect of the design focused on maintaining traffic flow and regulating driver speeds by redesigning existing intersections, three of which would be converted into dual and single lane roundabouts. Rutkowski said the roundabouts would prompt drivers to slow down before entering intersections and reduce traffic congestion that’s caused by waiting for a green light. Right now, 50 percent of all crashes along South Churton are rear-end (slowing or stopping) crashes.
A proposed rendering of a South Churton Street roundabout at Orange Grove Road. (Photo via Town of Hillsborough.)
“I’d rather be going, moving slow,” said Rutkowski, “than stop and go, stop and go, stop and go, which is happening today.”
The new design seeks to add traffic signals and high-visibility pedestrian crosswalks to existing intersections along the corridor. The marked countdown crosswalks would allow any person not traveling by car to access a safe, high-quality intersection within 90 seconds, while also making pedestrians more visible to drivers.
A proposed rendering of a pedestrian crosswalk along South Churton Street. (Photo via Town of Hillsborough.)
The design includes adding several cross-sections with planted center medians along Mayo Street. Accompanied by small trees and plants, Rutkowski said the curbed medians could act as an attractive town feature, while also making streets safer for crossing pedestrians and through traffic.
“If it’s flat and straight and concrete people are going to fly through there,” he said. “But if there’s some kind of verticality, both in the middle and on the side, then we create that sense of enclosure, and people have a tendency to put two hands on the wheel and put the phone down.”
A proposed rendering of South Churton Street’s planted medians and pedestrian paths. (Photo via Town of Hillsborough.)
Feedback from community input sessions centered around pedestrian safety, as 91 percent of those surveyed said they felt unsafe walking along the corridor. The proposed design would include a sidewalk along the entire road, as well as a wider, shared-use path from Mayo Street to I-40. The design also features street trees, benches, and bike racks to separate pedestrians from traffic and create a walkable amenity for the town.
Repeated praises for the project centered around its ability to include pedestrians and bikes in a safe way, making it possible to travel the road by way of something other than a vehicle. Hillsborough Mayor Mark Bell applauded the team’s ability to balance multiple modes of transportation in a design that the community helped shape.
“I saw how you were engaging the public in gathering feedback and writing down what people were saying, so I think you have led a very good effort to get all the best thinking from our citizens to help inform the solution.”
For more information regarding the project see the Town of Hillsborough’s project page.
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