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In response to the recent formation of a coalition composed of residents and local business owners who oppose the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s current design to reconfigure 15th Street in Washington, City Manager Jonathan Russell shared the city’s perspective. 

The design widens 15th Street to include four lanes of traffic that are divided by grassy medians with trees. It eliminates two-way turn lanes and instead guides traffic into left-turn lanes. To cross the street, drivers will have to turn right, then enter a left turn lane to make a u-turn. (This design is also known as a superstreet.) 

The project includes a ten-foot multi-use path on one side for joggers, bicyclists and pedestrians  and a traditional sidewalk on the other side of 15th Street. Russell said there are on-going discussions on mid-block pedestrian crossings with flashing lights. 

The project spans 1.8 miles of 15th Street from Carolina Avenue to John Small Avenue. It is estimated to cost a total $38 million. 

Right of Way Acquisitions and Utility Relocations are planned to begin this August. Construction is planned to begin in June of 2028. 

City Manager Shares Perspective 

“It’s always been a safety issue that’s been discussed well prior to my time,” Russell said. Initial discussions on how to increase safety and traffic flow on 15th Street began in 1997, he said. 

“It’s gonna be a project of compromise all the way around,” Russell said. “I think there’s benefits for the community as a whole. There’s benefits for the region and county, because everybody doesn’t live in Washington. They live on the east side of town and they work and commute to other places.” 

“I think with [long-term planning] and current traffic volumes, the option [NCDOT and Mid-East] proposed checks all of their boxes and it works well for what they’re trying to achieve as well as incorporating some of the Stantec design, multimodal options to help pedestrian traffic as well as bicycle traffic,” Russell said. He added that NCDOT’s design accounts for an expected increase in traffic over the next 30 years.

Mid-East Commission and Scoring Systems 

Mid-East Commission is a Rural Planning Organization, or a group that addresses and improves rural area transportation planning processes, NCDOT defines. They develop and collaborate with NCDOT to create comprehensive transportation plans, host forums to collect community input and provide transportation information to local governments, organizations and individuals. 

Under its umbrella are two groups – an advisory committee and a governing board. The advisory committee makes recommendations to the governing board who acts on those recommendations. Both committees are composed of government officials from Beaufort County and adjacent counties and include representatives from NCDOT, Brian Alligood explained at Monday’s city council meeting. Alligood is the Beaufort County Manager and chairman of Mid-East’s advisory committee. He was Washington’s City Manager from 2013-2015 and presented NCDOT’s improvement design to council members who included current members Richard Brooks and William Pitt. 

A large part of Mid-East’s work is to make suggestions on which projects should be added to NCDOT’s State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP). This 10-year program prioritizes projects across the state based on a data-driven scoring system that considers public input. The higher the score, the more likely a project is added to STIP and receives state funds to cover the construction costs, he continued. 

Eleven years ago, 15th Street was considered for the STIP as a safety project; however, the project went away because utility relocation costs were greater than expected. The project, relabeled as a widening project proposal from Mid-East, stayed in STIP.  In 2016, the City of Washington voted to not proceed with NCDOT’s improvements to 15th Street, and the department’s design received considerable opposition from Washington residents. 

The next year, NCDOT asked Mid-East to remove 15th Street from the STIP which they did not do, because removing a project from STIP means losing funds from the state that would cover the cost of the project. It could take years to get the funding back, because STIP is a decade long plan that is reviewed every two years. This same request and rejection happened again in 2018, because Mid-East wanted to ensure that funding remained available, Alligood shared.  

City hires Stantec to reconfigure 15th Street 

Two years later, the City of Washington hired Canada-based Stantec – a third party engineering, architecture and environmental consulting firm – to reconfigure 15th Street’s current design to make it safer and increase traffic flow. The city spent $75,000 on a plan they hoped would satisfy requirements from NCDOT and the public while involving the public in the process, per a Daily News article from 2021. 

Stantec’s design included a two lane section with a free flowing center turn lane. The City of Washington in 2021, accepted the design, Alligood said. According to design projections from Stantec, their design includes a multi-use path on one side of 15th Street and a traditional sidewalk on the other. It also includes pedestrian walkways and medians with landscaping. 

“We will be bringing the curbs into where the road is now, so we would avoid taking people’s property to expand the right of way. There is no silver bullet, but we think we can have a safer street within the existing right of way. Right now, the inner two lanes of the current road are essentially turning lanes anyway, so this option makes the road safer by eliminating the sudden stops and lane changes that occur when a motorist is trying to turn left. We’re making it more pedestrian-friendly by adding the paths on both sides,” Stantec project Manager Mike Rutkowski explained in 2021, per a Daily News article from that year. 

Stantec sent the design to Mid-East for evaluation, Alligood said. 

“In 2022, NCDOT studied the Stantec design, subjected it to traffic modeling and provided [Mid-East] with the preliminary score for the design. An outside engineering firm and the state transportation management engineer both concluded the design would function very poorly and create substantial delays to queuing within the project limit,” Alligood said. “Additionally, the project scored too low to be funded through STIP.” 

Alligood continued to say, “common sense will tell you that compressing the existing traffic volume on 15th Street into two lanes and turning that much volume, head-to-head, in a free flowing left-turn lane is extremely dangerous and will result in more vehicular crashes and potential crashes.” 

Safety and 15th Street 

There have been four fatal motor vehicle accidents on 15th Street since 2017, Washington Police Department shared. Of those deaths, one medical emergency caused a motor vehicle wreck. A map of fatal and serious injury wrecks from NCDOT shows that four fatalities have happened from 2014 to 2023 and two pedestrians were killed in separate accidents. Thirteen motor vehicle accidents with serious injuries have occurred since 2014, the map shows. 

Russell said it is “highly unlikely” the three most recent fatalities (all happening in 2024) on 15th Street would not have happened under NCDOT’s current design plan for the corridor. “So one life would have been enough to justify it,” he said. 

In the last 20 years, “there have been multiple accidents that could have been avoided,” he continued. 

15th Street Coalition 

Not everyone in Washington is convinced NCDOT’s design is the best solution for improved safety and traffic congestion. The newly formed 15th Street Coalition has garnered community support from approximately 500 residents and local business owners. Approximately 500 residents have signed a petition to oppose NCDOT’s design for 15th Street.  

Spokesperson for the coalition, Ellen Brabo, wrote to the Daily News saying the coalition supports “a design that includes safe sidewalks, a multi-use path, pedestrian crossings at all signalized intersections, and modernized drainage and utilities. But we also believe those goals can be achieved without the level of destruction the current NCDOT superstreet design would bring—eliminating driveways, disrupting neighborhood access, and threatening small businesses,” Brabo wrote. 

“What’s fueling the 15th Street Coalition is a collective belief that our community deserves better than a one-size-fits-all ‘superstreet’ that prioritizes vehicle speed over safety, accessibility and local vitality,” she wrote. The coalition would like to see the Stantec design reconsidered. They believe the Stantec design resolves safety issues and traffic congestion better than NCDOT’s four-lane design.  

The coalition’s website homepage states, “despite what you may have heard, the NCDOT design currently under review is not a done deal. There is still time to influence meaningful change – and your voice matters.”  

When asked if the coalition believes it has enough support to overturn NCDOT’s plan, Brabo wrote, “We believe the momentum is building every day. Nearly 500 local residents have signed the petition—representing almost half the number of voters who elect our city officials—which sends a strong message. This isn’t a fringe effort; it’s a broad coalition of residents, small business owners, and civic-minded individuals who see the long-term implications of this project and want better for Washington…Ultimately, our goal is to be part of the solution—not simply to push back, but to help shape a safer, more accessible and more economically vibrant 15th Street.” 

 According to both Russell and Alligood, NCDOT has received a green light from the City and Mid-East Commission to redesign 15th Street according to the transportation department’s plans. 

In 2022, the City of Washington sent NCDOT a letter of support for the current design. Minor tweaks and edits have been made to the design since then, but nothing significant enough to move 15th Street to the bottom of the STIP prioritization list or remove it altogether.