A Jackson County “southern loop” around Sylva that’s not even on the drawing board yet is already under fire.

Webster resident Malcolm MacNeill is circulating a petition asking Jackson County residents to oppose the road, which will be the subject of a Department of Transportation feasibility study beginning in the spring of 2002.

Western North Carolina Board of Transportation member and Jackson County Commissioner Conrad Burrell, however, supports the project and says it is needed.

“I absolutely think it will be a good project. Sooner or later we have to do something to relieve the traffic out there,” said Burrell.

MacNeill, however, hopes the project will be scrapped.

“If you are opposed to the noise, pollution, environmental damage and negative impact to our quiet and peaceful neighborhood that this proposed high-speed, four-lane highway would bring, let your voice be heard,” MacNeill wrote in a letter accompanying the petition.

The southern loop, identified on the DOT Transportation Improvement Plan as the “Sylva/Dillsboro Southern Loop (FS-0114C),” would extend from U.S. 441 south of Dillsboro to N.C. 107, probably between Wal Mart and the Western Carolina University campus. From there it would continue on to the U.S. 23/74 bypass. According to the DOT’s website, the feasibility study will look at a two-lane road with multi-lane right of way.

“This has been kicked around by DOT since 1985,” said Burrell. “Nothing has ever been done about it, and the traffic on N.C. 107 is getting beyond unbearable.”

Burrell said the daily traffic count on N.C. 107 is approximately 33,000 vehicles per day.

MacNeill, who says he has gathered the signatures of about 500 opposed to the road, said the proposed loop is not needed, is a waste of taxpayer money and will serve no useful purpose.

“We are opposed to it because it is not needed,” said MacNeill, the former owner of the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad in Dillsboro.

According to Al Avant, an assistant branch manager for program development in the DOT, a feasibility study means state engineers will study what has been proposed, ask local leaders and citizens about the proposal, and then come up with a cost estimate. From there, the project would move to the “unfunded” section of the TIP and eventually would be scheduled for construction.

The road was scheduled for a feasibility study after a November 2000 TIP public hearing at Southwestern Community College. Burrell says he helped move the project toward a feasibility study, but Avant said the Jackson County Economic Development Commission and the town of Sylva requested it be studied.

Burrell pointed to the increased business activity in that section of Jackson County and the scheduled growth of both Western Carolina University and Southwestern Community College. He has discussed the project with WCU Chancellor John Bardo and SCC President Dr. Cecil Groves.

“Both concur that something that has to be done in that area” said Burrell.

Sylva Mayor Brenda Oliver agreed with Burrell that conditions on N.C. 107 are at a breaking point. She said Sylva police work accidents on that road too often.

“We need relief. I really don’t know of any other way to do that,” said Oliver, who said the Sylva board has not formally discussed the project in quite some time.

She said taking traffic off Main Street would be detrimental to those businesses, but she also pointed out that much of the N.C. 107 traffic comes off the bypass onto the Asheville Highway and then turns onto N.C. 107, never going near downtown.

Jackson County Board Chairman Jay Denton agreed that the traffic and congestion on N.C. 107 was bad, but he said he had mixed feelings about the proposal.

“N.C. 107 forces you to sit stalled in traffic jams polluting the air. But a new road will damage streams, animals, cause runoff, and it will take a rural, quiet countryside and destroy it,” said Denton.

He suggested the DOT look at widening and improving existing roads.

“Those areas have already been impacted by a roadway instead of building a new road,” Denton said.
MacNeill also fears the road would destroy the beauty of historic Webster.

“It will cut right through one of the prettiest sections of Whittier,” he said.

Burrell, however, said MacNeill may be looking at an old map. He said the route is uncertain, and he would not support a road that changed the character of Webster.

“We know it won’t go through Webster. That is a historic place, and I would never support that,”
Burrell said. “There are more alternatives. Those people out there don’t have anything to worry about.”

 

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