We hear from people in subdivisions all the time who wish to convert their private road into a NC DOT approved public road. Most of the time, these private roads are currently maintained by an HOA or a Road Maintenance agreement.
Several qualifications must be met for NCDOT make a private road a public. Here are a few of the prerequisites:
- Neighborhood must be 80% built out
- Roads must not be too steep
- Roads must not have too many turns
- Roads must be wide enough
- Roads must not have shrubbery, mailboxes or statues in the right of way
- Roads must have culverts up to DOT standards
- Asphalt must be thick enough
Chatham County’s Chapel Ridge and Bobcat Point recently looked into making the private roads public. In the Chapel Ridge Golf Community, the roads were not up to NCDOT standards due to twists, turns and inclines. Bobcat Point’s roads had the wrong types of clverts and in many cases homeowners had added things to the right of way such as shrubs or statues.
