From Staff Reports 

A public meeting on state plans for the Interestate 26 Connector, which would be the Asheville area’s largest highway project in a generation, drew more than 400 people on Nov. 16 to downtown’s Reinaissance Asheville Hotel.

Among the public comments voiced were that it would be too big, that getting it built will take too long and that the dozens of maps — as much as 20 feet long with so many lines and colors — were bewildering.

In its current form, I-26 takes a sharp turn as it merges into Interstate 240 at Patton Avenue, causing a disruption in the interstate by requiring drivers headed north to cross four lanes of often-bumper-to-bumper traffic to access “future I-26” via a winding ramp. For the next 16 miles, the roadway is not yet up to current interestate standards, the latter of which, in itself, is yet another project.

The new connector would involve building a crossing over the French Broad River a short distance north to the Bowen Bridge, widening Interstate 240 in West Asheville and reworking the I-26/I-40/I-240 interchange on the west side of the city.

The project has been under discussion since the late 1980s and is estimated to cost from $591.7 million to $785.4 million.

Funding to build the French Broad crossing and the westside interchange has again entered into the state Department of Transportation’s long-range plan, but it would be at least 10 years before I-240 would be widened in West Asheville — and current plans call for eight lanes — if funding levels remain as they are now.

Concerned residents have until Dec. 16 to submit their comments to the DOT by telephone, mail, email or online. The state agency then will take that feedback into account in choosing its preferred design on where and how the road will be built — a decision due next spring.

A number of DOT employees and consultants explained the project to those attending for two-and-a-half hours on the afternoon of Nov. 16. That evening, a formal and lengthy public hearing followed.

Besides infrastructure improvements planned during the second half of this decade for areas east of the French Broad River and west of downtown, even bigger road projects are set to begin in southern Buncombe County around 2020.

City government recently began acquiring right-of-way for a project to rework a 2.2-mile section of Riverside greenway path, landscaping and parking. Work from the Lyman Street/Amboy Road intersection north to a point near Riverside Cemetery is scheduled to begin in 2017 and be completed in 2019 or 2020.

A $174 million project to widen Interstate 26 from four lanes to eight in southern Buncombe County is to begin in 2020. The project will stretch from Interstate 40 to the Henderson County line.

Future projects will be even larger. Work to reconfigure the I-26/I-40/I-240 interchange on the west side of town and widen a short section of I-40 is to begin in 2021 and the state Department of Transportation’s tentative start date for a new crossing of the French Broad River north of Bowen Bridge is 2023.

The agency also plans to widen U.S. 19-23 from Broadway Street north through Woodfin, beginning in 2022.

City government is studying whether it should build additional parking downtown and there is still interest in increasing use of its bus system. Ridership has increased slowly, rising by 1.9 percent in 2014-15.

“Interestingly, if you talk to any urban designer, the focus is public transportation, not parking,” Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer said in a recent interview. “I don’t know if Asheville is ready for that. I hear a lot of pushback on that, and that there’s a desire for additional parking.”