a church close by built a new building. As part of that work a public road was extended past the church. I drove on the new road for a few weeks. Now it seems they are trying to close that new section of road - they put large barriers at each end of the new section.
Does it take a court order to close a road in most states? This is NC if it matters. I suspect the church is trying to close it. This road has very little traffic so I don’t think that is the issue . It has all the signs, pavement markings, etc for a public road.
And that depends on whether it really is a public(-owned) road or not. The OP says it is, based on the fact that there are signs and pavement markings, but I don’t think that proves it: there are signs and pavement markings in parking lots.
I’m pretty sure that different entities (cities, counties, states) have jurisdiction over different public roads, and that the answer to the OP’s question would depend on who has jurisdiction over this particular road.
there are some local roads clearly marked as private , including the short street I live on. The town or state does not own or maintain those roads. This road is not marked as private.
Maybe the church changed their mind and did not give the property to be a public road. Or maybe they are waiting to get the payment for their land.
I’ve seen lots of roads closed for a short time for construction. This construction was finished months ago.
You seem to be assuming that everything about the construction was done correctly. This is not always a safe assumption. I have seen a few cases where a problem developed after a few months, and some of the work had to be redone.
Road issues are rife with problems. I live at the end of a county road, that is unimproved. They grade it about every 2 years. My drive comes directly off the road so we try to keep the connection taken care of so we can actually get into our property. My husband took it upon himself to dig a couple of ditches along side of the county road to keep water from pooling on a particular spot. He got a nasty letter from the county for his efforts. But, they did come and drop some gravel in that spot after that.
So you never know, the city or county may be disputing the improvement or some utility is having problem with right-of-way.
There are a billion reasons it could be closed. It doesn’t require a court order. The road is owned by whomever owns it and they can do what they want. If it’s public, then it’s probably the municipality or county. Of course, the simplest answer is that since they didn’t have one there before, the church likely built it themselves and therefore it’s treated the same way you would treat a driveway. You can probably find a plat map online of your county and it will show you the landowner. There is a chance that they ceded right-of-way to the city or county if they own it, but either way, it’s highly unlikely that anything suspect is going on. If the city owns it, they won’t take kindly to a church putting up barriers and they would come down pretty quickly. If the church owns it, then they can do what they want and it’s no different than if someone is taking shortcuts through your backyard and you put up a fence. If the church is simply mad that the road exists, then there wouldn’t be barriers there. They might be appealing to the city or even going to court over it, but the road would stay open in the meantime. The only reason I can think a court would get involved would be if there is a dispute over who owns it, but that likely would have been dealt with before the road was completed.
If I had to take a guess, since it has only been open a few weeks is that they discovered an issue after traffic started driving on it, maybe premature cracking or they are worried about some sort of erosion. Generally speaking, they don’t build a road and then close it after a month unless something is wrong. It’s also possible that they are wanting to do more construction and the road was never officially opened, but people started driving on it anyway, so they put up the barriers. I would wager that it is probably being closed by the municipality rather than the church simply because the church isn’t going to build a road just to immediately close it. Even if it had issues, they’d probably still use it. It’s a waste of money to build something only to immediately shut it down.
As it happens I know a little bit about road privatization in NC. I’m aware of a church on a dead-end street which over time acquired all the properties on the street and then “privatized” it, including a gate at the entrance. I don’t know the exact mechanism, but if you drive down it without permission you can be charged with trespassing. Also, some members of the same church acquired all the houses on a different dead-end street and privatized that.
I assume there is some legal or regulatory process, which obligates the “owners” to maintain the road, but these are cases where the road is not a through road. Seems like the OP is suggesting that the barricades interrupt a through road.
this road connects a couple of neighborhoods to NC 54 which is a major 2 lane road in the area. NC 54 has a lot of shopping centers on it and connects to a lot of other neighborhoods.
About 15 years ago a local shopping center sort of closed a road and turned it into a parking lot since they owned land on both sides of the road. You can still drive it but now you are driving through a parking lot. I don’t think anyone complained about that since it’s not really a closure.
Yeah, this. Somebody permitted it, and somebody knows about it. If it’s a municipality (City, Village) contact city hall. The engineering department. Your council representative. Someone can at least point you in the right direction to a person who knows.
I dunno. In my general area, a public road between two private lots would show on the map as a open gap between the two boundaries. The map is drawn with exact survey results of lot corners, so a gap of 15 or 20 feet of public property will show on the map.
A roadway built on private property for the convenience of access for construction vehicles does not necessarily make it a public road. However, in most states at least, a driveable road connecting two designated public thoroughfares can be legally used by the public. But the owner of such a roadway has a right to block it in any manner, and that informal act by itself terminates the right of public access.
With the exception that using a private parking lot or similar public-accessible area to bypass a traffic control device (traffic light) is a ticketable offense in some areas. You can’t cut through the corner gas station or strip mall to turn right.
Just a single line? … or a 60 foot space between the properties? … tax maps here in the USA typically add the names the streets … here’s an example … and these are supposed to be accurate to a tenth of a foot …
Someone in local government knows exactly why this road is blocked off … your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find that person then report back here the name … just the name please …
Perhaps they built a short roadway to accommodate the building process, with the clear intention that it be modified into parking after no longer so required?
I could see the municipality requiring it to be ‘public’ only WHILE they were using it as an access road. And now that they’re done, that’s over.
Call and ask, but my money is on this is what you’ll be told.
