My blueprint for a better highway
Since every successful negotiation requires compromise, it’s become a strategic norm to slip a couple sacrifices into the bartering briefcase. These are throwaway requests made for the sake of bargaining; everyone comes to the table with something they’re willing to give away.
As Havelock residents and business owners prepare to lobby the Super 70 Corridor Commission for changes to its U.S. 70 plans Thursday, it occurs to me that many are insistent and inflexible when it comes to their vision for the highway. What they want is set in asphalt if not in stone.
In a helpful and humorous spirit, I’ve prepared a U.S. 70 wish list that Havelock can hand-deliver to the N.C. Department of Transportation at Thursday evening’s meeting. Pass along my punch list, and maybe the Gateway City’s already reasonable requests will look especially realistic by comparison.
First, there are far too many gargantuan tractor-trailers and similarly sluggish trucks plodding along in the left lane. We can no longer rely on courtesy and tradition to enforce the highway’s division into a fast lane and a slow lane; if you drive on U.S. 70, you know that “fast lane” has become a mythical concept equivalent to “leprechaun” or “unicorn.”
Or “Havelock bypass.”
It’s time to pass laws and post signs telling truck drivers to move to the right. Freight and long-haul transport is worthy and important business, but the rest of us need to get to work, too, and we’d rather not trickle through town at your glacial pace. If you’re not preparing to turn left, move right.
Scrawled in all-capitals, underlined in red and quadruple-circled on my highway wish list is the following entry: Improve intersections with railroad tracks and keep traffic moving when there’s no train coming.
School buses and some other large vehicles are required to stop at all railroad crossings. There was a recent scare in the James City community when cars ran into a stopped school bus at the railroad tracks, causing a grisly pileup.
Speed and convenience should always take a backseat to safety, but is it really safer to make vehicles notorious for their poor acceleration come to a dead stop in the middle of the highway at every railroad crossing?
How many wrecks and close calls happen when drivers slam on their brakes, then dart inattentively into the next lane to pass the stopped buses?
I’d bet my aging sedan’s left-front brake pad that we might all be safer if traffic kept on flowing when the tracks are clear and the guardrails are up.
My next request is a rare departure from my Libertarian view that governments shouldn’t interfere with private business decisions. I think all gas stations along an interstate or U.S. highway should be open 24 hours.
This was the norm in Florida where I grew up, and I was shocked to discover that many eastern North Carolina gas stations close at 10 p.m. One night, I ran out of gas on Glenburnie Road in New Bern and pulled into the nearest station.
The convenience store was closed and the pumps were shut off. I walked a half-mile to a station that was open and filled my trusty red gas can with a gallon of regular unleaded, then carried it back to my thirsty car.
Fueling stations provide an essential service, and the government has already nosed its way into gasoline sales by way of hefty taxes. Seems to me every station built on a highway designed for long-distance overnight travel should at least let us pay at the pump when the needle’s on E at zero-dark-thirty.
Those ideas - along with a mandatory lifetime driving ban for anyone caught “ghostriding the whip”- comprise my personal U.S. 70 roadmap. The Super 70 group has vastly different priorities, and everyone who’s concerned about the future of Havelock’s main street should try to attend Thursday’s meeting.
The Super 70 public work session is planned from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at the Havelock Tourist and Event Center. I hope to see you there.
This is the latest installment of my biweekly newspaper column.