Indiana wants me...

...Lord, I can't go back there.

A while back we had a photo of a Welcome to Pennsylvania sign from a movie to see if it was real or not and where it may have been.

This time we have another - this is a real photo of crossing into Indiana sometime around 1978-1981, Sue Wilson sent this into me hoping to locate where this may be.

Does anyone have any ideas?

NCDOT's Charlotte Outer Loop Construction Page

Though the road is a good five to eight years away, NCDOT has a pretty informative webpage up on what is now the missing link of Interstate 485 in Northern Mecklenburg County.

What's of note is the design of the current intersection of I-485 and I-85 near University. The interchange is currently a trumpet; but it will be transformed into a high speed four level stack interchange - similar in design to I-485's interchange with I-77 near the South Carolina line.

Also checkout the design of the Prosperity Church Road interchange with four roundabouts!

Take a look for yourself, NCDOT's Charlotte Outerbelt Page.

Where in the world?

As I am sure as many of you have noticed, until Bob Malme's three posts this past month (and mine from last night) the blog has been rather silent since January. And a few have wondered aloud or e-mail "What happened?" or "Where did Adam go?" Though I can't speak for the others, I can speak for myself.

It's been a busy few months from work to vacations and of course the Carolina Hurricanes made a run through the Stanley Cup playoffs. And of course - with the weather turning from winter to Spring - tailgate parties on weekend afternoons. So a lot of my time has been tied up in many other activities that I am involved in.

Of course, that's no different for anyone else, as hobbies and pursuits and commitments change year to year.

Now that I finally have a small break to catch my breath (it seems like yesterday was Christmas) I have had a chance to catch up on some blogging, and hopefully web updates. Right now I am just working through e-mails with corrections or additional details. I had started a WV update around the first of the year, and quite honestly, I forget where I left off on it.

However, there are changes coming up - and over the past five - six years I am sure many have noticed the updates have slowed down - as has my interest. It certainly has evolved, and I have been fairly busy on flickr taking photos from hikes, small towns, and of course hockey games. (A few have commented that I don't even take roadgeek photos anymore - and that's pretty much true.)

I'm going to be scaling down my end of gribblenation...some quickly some slowly. It will be less a signgeek and roads oriented site, but more on the features telling the story of places to see visit, and histories of highways and towns along the way. It's a transition, as some have noticed, that I started a number of years ago, and hope to continue to improve and grow at.

I also will most likely cut back on states, I have wondered aloud to some friends in the hobby - that there's so much in North Carolina that I feel the other states take away from my time doing it. I have a backlog that now goes back to 2005 for features from all over, and I'd like to catch up on it somehow.

So some of the sign galleries that I run at gribblenation.com will be moving. I've already discussed and agreed where Pennsylvania will go to Jeff Kitsko. I don't intend to delete anything (and won't) but more than likely I will not be updating the sign galleries - unless they are something specific like Virginia Cutouts, PA Keystones, or Florida Color US Shields.

Road meets, I just don't have the time or interest in having the large regional meets anymore. You can only see construction of I-485 in Charlotte so many times before it becomes stale. And putting them together on the scale that we have in North Carolina (15-20 attendees) can be exhaustive.

I will still go to them every now and then, and if someone wants to put one together in North Carolina again - great. But after now 10 years of putting them together or going to them, unless it is something out of the ordinary...I just have other and at times better things to do.

The blogs, I really enjoy, and I'll still be active with this blog and Carolina Crossroads. And who knows what else will come out of it. As long as NCDOT is NCDOT...something will always come up.

So what does this post mean, and I hope I didn't come out as a jerk or anything (though being perceived as one has kept some of the really intesne and over-enthused folks in the hobby away over the years.) It means that I just have moved on from my participation and interest in the hobby over time. What I am interested in is not the same as what most within the hobby have, and I want to persue the items I have grown a stronger interest in over the past few years.

So who knows what is next...but I'm looking forward to it. And I thank everyone for their interest and friendship over the past decade.

Point Lookout Trail Photos

Last year, I blogged about how 3.6 miles of the former Central Highway (US 70/NC 10) in McDowell County, NC were to become part of a greenway called the Point Lookout Trail.

This past January, Jamie Sharp, sent me a few photos of the new greenway from last fall. The old concrete roadway now has a fresh layer of asphalt and the kudzu, overgrowth, and downed trees have all been cleared.



The last photo is from Point Lookout. A new flag pole was placed at the site of the former roadside stop that stood here for years.

Photo Credits: Jamie Sharp

Old Fort on Dwellable

More Changed Exit Number Photos

This time on I-74 from Laurinburg to Pembroke, NC. This newest stretch of highway opened in two phases. The first section of the new road from US 74 Business (now US 74 Business/US 74 Alternate) to NC 710 opened in the Fall of 2007. At the same time I-74 shields, mileposts and exit numbers went up along the existing Laurinburg and Maxton Bypasses. The exit numbers ran from 207 to 226. The final segment opened a year later from NC 710 across I-95 to beyond NC 41 south of Lumberton. This stretch had mileposts running from 200 to 214. Both could not be right. I had contacted NCDOT in 2007 regarding the exit numbers they had put up thinking they were about 25 miles or so too high. It seems by 2008, they had come to a similar conclusion. They, at first, blanked out exit numbers, like what was Exit 207 seen below, where the old numbers duplicated those to the east:
When they finally got around to changing the numbers in late April and May of this year, the new exit number was 181 (new exit number photos courtesy of James Mast):
What once was the main exit to Laurinburg, US Business 15 and 401:

Exit 210, is now the more reasonable Exit 184:
And once the end of I-74 listed as Exit 226...
Is now the more well rounded, Exit 200:
The final exit number on I-74, going east, for now is 213 for NC 41:
And a bonus, in case some haven't seen what the exit signs for I-74/US 74 on I-95 look like:
For a look at all the photos taken along the new stretch of I-74 go HERE and choose Segments 15 and 16.

Meet the New NCDOT, Same as the Old NCDOT?

My apologies to The Who.

This month's NCDOT Employee Newsletter features a column by Ted Vaden, Deputy Secretary for Internal and External Affairs, the agency's director of communication. The article (available here:
http://www.ncdot.gov/_templates/download/external.html?pdf=http%3A//www.ncdot.org/download/newsroom/Newsletter.pdf starting on page 2) states that NCDOT is one of the best transportation departments in the country but that past management has not been able to get that news out very well by largely just reacting to reports of NCDOT making mistakes after the fact. The new agency management says it's committed to better, more accurate communications, and being more proactive in pushing NCDOT's positive news. The article indicates that the NCDOT Secretary, as part of this new proactive process, has been traveling around the state to public forums in an attempt to change the public perception about NCDOT that it is better at wasting taxpayer's dollars than building roads.

Well, funny they should be touting better communication this month. Seems NCDOT, over the next two weekends, is going to be closing what is once again part of Interstate 40, and Business 85, inside the Greensboro Urban Loop to perform a repaving project, one direction closed each weekend. They sent out a news release to the Greensboro paper and included a map of the detours to get around the construction. One problem, both the release and map, (you can access the map by pasting in the link here:
http://mm.news-record.com/drupal//files/documents/traffic_detours_may_2009.pdf) refer to the old route alignments which NCDOT, in another release a couple weeks ago, stated they were starting the process of changing. As seen in the previous post, almost all the Business 40 signs have been replaced by Interstate 40 along I-40's original alignment. But the release and map refer and show Business 40 through Greensboro and tell how to bypass it using I-40/I-73, I-40/85, etc. which, technically where the signs haven't been changed, do not exist. The map includes I-40 exit numbers both on the old and new alignments as well as Business 40 exit numbers along I-40 west of Business 85, of which only the exit gore sign numbers were ever changed.The Greensboro N&R dutifully put up the text and map on their website. They eventually redid their text when a reader (not me) commented about the paper using the old route designations and pointing out they had an article the week or so before listing all the route and exit number changes. The paper apologized, saying they hadn't checked the news release close enough before publishing it. (I eventually added a comment myself in response to a question in a previous comment).

Commentary:
Hmm, it still appears that NCDOT's right hand still doesn't know what it's left hand is doing. This occurred within the same department, public relations, to boot. Wasn't this going to change under the new administration? Let's hope they have better luck laying a new surface on I-40 in Greensboro than in Durham. You cannot dictate policy changes from above and have them automatically filter down throughout an entire organization. Communication at NCDOT has been a problem for a long time. Saying you're going to be more accurate doesn't suddenly mean that you'll have the same employees double-checking press releases for mistakes. (I hope this release was done by a different person at least, not that that's a real excuse.) It would also be helpful for NCDOT if the media would do its job and check facts before publishing something. By apparently assuming, like the Greensboro N&R did, that this release should have no problems with it, it only compounded the original mistake. It should not take a reader to inform a paper that the facts of an article are wrong. Don't any of the paper's employees, or NCDOT's for that matter, drive I-40?

Maybe the first stop for Secretary Conti on his better communications road trip should have been to the NCDOT press office.

Checking out I-40 Sign Changes in Greensboro

Took a Short (shorter than I'd planned, more later) trip through Greensboro on the new/old alignment of I-40 through Greensboro. Photos and comments below:

There was a notice by NCDOT that they were closing three left lanes going west around the old/new I-40/I-85 split east of Greensboro last Thursday night (5/21). I surmised that they were adding more to the I-85 signs that had become largely empty spaces since they removed the I-40 signage last September:
Turned out the assumption was correct, here's what the new signage looks like:
As you can see in this photo, and the closer view below, they've added a To US 421, since that route will be put on the Urban Loop, and a 'To North ( ). What is that for?
The only route that goes north from I-85 in its trip around the loop, now that the 421 route is changed, is I-73. But it will also go south from I-85 also in the future. Maybe that realization prompted the sign not to be put up? Maybe NCDOT is waiting until more signage is changed along the Loop? The next month or so may answer the question. If not, I may see if my contact who gave me heads up on when this project was starting can give me an answer.

Here's the photo at the split itself, the first few exit numbers beyond on once again I-40 are correct, but not all have changed:
Signs under the I-840 bridge in the distance still have Business 85 numbers. Here though are a couple of the first signs with the new I-40 exit numbers:
This one is for the future I-840 west, now just leading to US 70. The other is at the Exit 227 ramp showing...
The new numbers for future I-840 and McConnell Road, the remaining McConnell road signs by the bridge in the background feature the old Business 85 and tabs for the former I-85 numbers. The next sign with a new number also features other changes as well...

The shield for NC 6 has disappeared with the addition of the new exit number. The sign originally also had 'To North US 421' but that was removed when the route was routed onto I-40 a couple miles to the west. NC 6 was actually decommissioned about 4 years ago. Meanwhile, though the exit numbers have changed, and signs at the intersecting roadways have been changed to I-40, sign assemblies along the road have not changed, as the next photo shows...

The shields are both still Business 40/85. Plus they have not swapped out the mile posts as of yet:
The milepost is that of Business 85. The new exit number is for what was the exit for US 421 South. According to the 2010 Rand McNally Atlas there are no plans to make the old route of US 421 into a business route. If you see some drops in the photo, this is where it started raining, which would eventually cut the photos part of the trip short.
Another photo of Exit 222 where the removed US Route shield is more visible.
Another example of the lack of progress on the surface shields, the exit number is missing the US 421, but the shields seen beyond include a 'To North US 421.' The 6 shield assemblies in both directions (no photos) were still present beyond where US 29/70/220 enter. There were changes to the exit numbers though:
Exit 220, when I-40 was on the Loop, was for US 220 (I-73) South. Now the number is just for a road, though an important one, Randleman Road. The final new exit number signage are for the I-40/Business 85 split...
You'll notice that the exit tab is now on the left and that there is a missing North US 421 shield. US 220 is sent on I-40 only to take the next exit and cross now Business 85 again going south.
This was the last photo I could take before it started raining too hard, showing the split, the removed US 421 shield on the sign, but US 421 still included in the assembly beyond. You can also see construction on the new bridge that will carry I-40 west toward the interchange with Business 85. The US 421 shields have not been removed going further west to the other Loop interchange. There are also still a couple left going eastbound. The US 421 sign has been removed from the eastbound I-40 exit signs, and all the exit numbers have been changed, though there was a portable VMS put up indicating which exit to take for South 421. No other changes in exit signs were noted on the Loop.

They plan to close one direction of the whole I-40 section from the I-85 to US 29 the weekends of May 30-31 and June 6-7 to complete a resurfacing project. Hopefully, they can update the remaining signs at the same time. They can them move on to changing signs along the Loop. The project is supposed to be completed by July. My guess is they would prefer all the changes in place before the July 4 weekend, as they made these changes just before Memorial Day. I will hopefully be taking another trip, on a sunny day, to get photos of the remaining changes.