NCDOT takes new approach to hear residents' concerns about Crabtree mall interchange project

The North Carolina Department of Transportation is taking a new approach, as representatives sit down to listen to residents’ concerns before moving forward with a controversial project.

The project involves updating the roads around Interstate 440 and Glenwood Avenue, and DOT officials said their initial community meeting was so well-attended that they had to come up with a better way to listen.

The intersection where I-440 and Glenwood Avenue meet has been a problem area for a long time, but the area hasn’t changed much since its inception. In the mid-80s, one loop of the cloverleaf was dropped and the left-hand turn from eastbound lanes of I-440 was created to ease the traffic back-up problem of the era.

“Of course, that doesn’t last forever. Raleigh and Wake County are growing,” said Joey Hopkins with the DOT. “We’ve had a lot of changes since the ’80s, and we will continue to have changes.”

Plan underway to reduce traffic around Crabtree Valley Mall

The need to know what’s going on with the project prompted a press conference Thursday to announce a new way of addressing resident concerns.

“We’re going to have facilitated listening sessions coming up in September,” Hopkins said.

The DOT has hired a firm to help them listen to the concerns of those living in the area. It’s the first time the agency has used this type of process.

“We want to hear what everybody thinks, so these facilitated sessions will be designed in such a way that everybody has a way to share what their concerns are, what they like, what they don’t like, what they want to see changed and what they don’t want to see changed,” Hopkins said.

Residents said the new approach is exactly what they have sought from the very beginning.

“There’s a real concern that they are moving this way, way too fast,” RESIDENT said. “I hope they care enough to listen to the citizens who will be impacted.”

DOT officials said they’ve counted more than 500 crashes in the area of I-440 and Glenwood Avenue in the past few years. At this point, there is no firm date to have a drawing of the new project prepared.