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Surf City examines bridge‑ramp metering, flagging after 3‑hour delays during July 5 weekend
Summary
Town staff presented preliminary results from a traffic‑management pilot that combined bridge‑ramp metering and flaggers; staff reported a July 5 network failure (northbound drive times over three hours), recommended suspending flaggers for DOT baseline collection, and will present full analysis at an August work session.
Kyle, Surf City’s staff lead on transportation, told the council the town has been testing two separate treatments — a bridge ramp metering signal and contracted flagging at mainland intersections — to ease congestion coming off Topsail Island.
Kyle said the town began collecting predictive drive times with Google Maps on May 9 and expanded monitoring on May 20, and that the traffic‑management services ran on three recent weekends starting June 27. “Drive times going north in the afternoon of the 5th exceeded 3 hours,” Kyle said, describing a network failure on July 5 when day‑trippers, second homeowners and renters overloaded the system.
Why it matters: the pilot is intended to show whether ramp metering, light‑timing changes or continued mainland flagging most effectively reduce long delays. Kyle said flaggers helped keep vehicles moving at some intersections, but the bottleneck at the NC 50/NC 210 intersection remains acute: staff reported more than 90% of vehicles attempting the westbound NC 210 movement, which quickly fills a 15‑car stacking lane and cascades delays back toward the island.
Staff recommendations and next steps: the town will pause flagging and the bridge ramp meter during a DOT data‑collection weekend so DOT can collect baseline timing and deliver a new light‑timing schematic (staff expects that by mid‑August). Kyle recommended capturing that baseline data and returning to the council at the August 20 work session with a full analysis. He also noted the town has spent $32,825 of a planned $60,000 budget for traffic‑management services to date.
Council reaction: members praised staff for the data work and suggested producing a short "local's guide" for travel during high‑demand weekends. Staff and councilors agreed to a data‑driven approach rather than immediate large operational changes; the council asked staff to return with the full dataset and recommended actions at the August work session.
What remains unresolved: staff described two central questions the data must answer — whether the bridge‑ramp light is effective at improving northbound egress on the island and whether improved signal synchronization will remove the need for mainland flaggers in mid‑August. The council did not take a new formal vote on operations during the meeting; staff framed the work as an evidence‑gathering and analysis phase that will inform future decisions.
