How one Union County town is surveying every inch of its roads for improvements

INDIAN TRAIL, N.C. — One town in Union County is scrutinizing every inch of pavement to try and make your drive as smooth as possible.

Indian Trail is using a special truck to pinpoint what streets need resurfacing.

Take Steamlet Way, for example. Channel 9’s Gina Esposito found it has one of the worst scores, and it’s a bumpy road with some patchwork. The town says they’ve wanted to bring in experts to grade every street in town.

To do that, a white truck has been driving around collecting data on 90 miles of streets maintained by the town.

“This is a more precise, a little more data-based information and based on that, gives us our priorities as what streets we will pave first,” said Town Manager Mike McLaurin.

McLaurin says the council made a huge investment to improve road conditions. From 2023 to 2024, they’ve paid to resurface more than 70 streets.

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“Council has the philosophy that if you use the town and you pay taxes you use our streets we have a responsibility to make sure you have good streets to drive on,” McLaurin said.

Technology from the truck gives each street a rating, with 100 being the highest.

“If the streets are 80 percent that a good thing,” said Mayor David Cohn. “I think Mike, we got them in the 70s ... so we will evaluate what we need to do as far as repaving roads.”

Cohn says many residents have complained about roads maintained by the North Carolina Department of Transportation, and the town has been working to take over some of them. He says they’re also investing in projects to improve traffic, like the Chestnut Parkway extension, and the completed project on Indian Trail Road.

“We haven’t approved a housing project in over five years in Indian Trail because we have to slow down- we have to get this infrastructure fixed and done,” Cohn said.

The town says 12 roads, including Steamlet Way, are scheduled to be resurfaced in the fall. When it gets the results back from Thursday’s survey, leaders can start to plan for future projects.

NCDOT says it looks at primary roads every year and secondary roads every other year. While some people have complained about Wesley Chapel Stouts Road, NCDOT says it’s technically in good shape. The department did say it plans to patch up spots.

Indian Trail has an interactive map to check the rating of all town-maintained streets. You can find that map at this link.

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