Drivers who've spent years crawling through North Raleigh's U.S. 401 corridor finally have some relief. The North Carolina Department of Transportation says its overhaul of three key intersections along the highway — at Mitchell Mill Road, Ligon Mill Road and Perry Creek Road — is now complete and open to traffic, finishing nearly a year ahead of schedule.
The $37.34 million project, tracked under the state infrastructure plan as STIP Project U-5748, broke ground in summer 2023 and targeted a stretch of highway that, according to Southern Farm Network, now carries nearly 60,000 vehicles a day. NCDOT budgeted $34.7 million for construction and another $2.64 million for right-of-way and utility acquisition, according to the agency. Project manager Lee Mai said the work “provides safer connections at all three intersections and makes everyday travel easier for the community,” adding that the project “means a lot” to her, per the same report.
A Rare Continuous Flow Design Lands in North Raleigh
The centerpiece of the project is the new continuous flow intersection at Mitchell Mill Road — only the second of its kind built in North Carolina, following NCDOT's first CFI at N.C. 16 and Mt. Holly-Huntersville Road in Charlotte, which opened in 2019 and later won the Grand Conceptor Award at the 2020 ACEC/NC Engineering Excellence Awards, according to NCDOT.
Under the design, southbound U.S. 401 drivers turning left onto eastbound Mitchell Mill Road no longer wait in the main intersection. Instead they switch onto a dedicated connector road east of the highway before reaching the intersection, crossing opposing travel lanes ahead of time so left turns can move at the same moment as through traffic, NCDOT explains. The setup can effectively double the amount of traffic moving through an intersection while avoiding the far higher cost and larger footprint of building a full interchange, the agency notes.
Feeder Roads Add Thousands More Cars to the Mix
The redesign wasn't limited to Mitchell Mill Road. NCDOT also relocated the Ligon Mill Road intersection roughly 1,500 feet north of Mitchell Mill Road, creating an offset layout intended to reduce congestion and improve traffic flow between the two closely spaced crossings, the agency says. Existing sections of old Ligon Mill Road were left in place to preserve local driveway access.
That realignment matters because feeder streets — Perry Creek, Mitchell Mill and Ligon Mill roads — collectively dump an additional 17,000 vehicles daily onto the U.S. 401 corridor, according to Construction Equipment Guide. Building the interchange-style upgrades required subsurface rock removal, 54-inch diameter drilled shafts for bridge extensions, and pouring concrete columns and bridge decks, the trade outlet reports, all while crews kept heavy daily commuter traffic moving through the work zone.
Perry Creek Gets a Safer Turn Pattern
At Perry Creek Road, NCDOT installed a Reduced Conflict Intersection, a design that directs side-street traffic to turn right and loop through a median U-turn rather than crossing opposing lanes head-on. NCDOT reports that RCIs can lower total crashes by up to 50%, as noted by WPTF, by eliminating the high-angle broadside collision points that traditional left turns create.
Highway construction also rippled into recreational infrastructure nearby. The City of Raleigh confirmed the work required a temporary closure and detour of the Neuse River Greenway Trail between the WRAL Soccer Complex and Trailhead Lane from December 2024 through January 2025, since the greenway crosses adjacent to the project area.
Part of a Bigger Push Along U.S. 401
The North Raleigh work fits into a much longer regional effort to widen U.S. 401 as Wake County's population, now estimated at 1.25 million and still North Carolina's largest, keeps pushing vehicle miles traveled higher. NCDOT completed a separate 2023 project widening U.S. 401 from two to four lanes between N.C. 96 in Wake County and Louisburg in Franklin County, with a second phase of that expansion slated for 2028, according to LocalWiki.
Hoodline previously covered a related southern-Wake expansion in Garner's six-lane U.S. 401 project, as well as the nearby Ligon Mill Road bridge replacement in Wake Forest and its associated detours. NCDOT projects that traffic along the U.S. 401 corridor will keep climbing, with volumes expected to reach more than 93,000 vehicles a day by 2040 — a number that underscores why officials describe these intersection upgrades as necessary just to help the highway keep pace with growth, rather than a permanent fix.
