Everyone has an opinion about what the future of the Cashiers crossroads should look like.
Depending on how you envision the intersection of NC107 and US64, the following will either be great news, or terrible news.
According to Highlands Mayor Pat Taylor, who serves as a representative to the NC Rural Planning Organization for Western North Carolina, any modifications to the crossroads are still several years from becoming a reality.
In 2023, the Jackson County board of commissioners decided to swap two proposed projects within the NC Department of Transportation’s “State Transportation Improvement Plan.” The county moved a project to modernize the crossroads above a project to widen NC107 from Cullowhee to the Thorpe Power Plant.
Last year, the RPO followed suit in hopes to get more priority points for a crossroads redesign.
Unfortunately, the crossroads project still did not score very high within the 2024 STIP, and as Taylor noted, is unlikely to be approved before 2030. Once funding is secured, it could be as long as two additional years before work commences.
While no official design plan has been approved, there are several options to update and modernize the crossroads to improve traffic flow, increase safe access for pedestrians, and cut down on the number of ingresses and egresses from the immediate area around the intersection.
One suggestion that has been floated in past years is the addition of a turning lane from the crossroads all the way to the Ingles shopping plaza on US64. That would definitely improve traffic flow, but it would require a lot of right-of-way acquisition, which costs a pretty penny.
Another idea is to create a two-lane roundabout at the crossroads and get rid of the red light all together. How that would pan out during peak traffic times, and in peak tourism season, would require significant research. Similar roundabouts in Sylva and Franklin have worked well, but none have been installed at intersections with kind of volume the crossroads sees during peak usage.
And of course, there are folks who don’t want to see the current crossroads changed at all. They’re used to the traffic pattern, long wait times, and they don’t mind just to keep the status quo.
No matter what your opinion, changes are still a long way off