NCDOT to close railroad crossings in Gibsonville, Burlington for track work

Five railroad crossings between Gibsonville and Burlington will close intermittently Wednesday and Thursday, July 2-3, while Norfolk Southern installs a second track across the corridor. The closures hit East Joyner Street and Huffines Street, Gibsonville Church Street and Oak Avenue, Elon York Road and Gilliam Road, Lakeview Drive and South Glen Raven Road, and Elmira Street and Main Street. NCDOT said marked detours will go up when each crossing is blocked, and drivers should plan ahead for delays and stay on posted detour routes.

The work is especially disruptive in Gibsonville, which sits in both Guilford and Alamance counties and lies on the North Carolina Railroad corridor between Greensboro and Burlington. That makes the town a choke point for drivers crossing town streets that intersect the rail line, with traffic patterns shifting as individual crossings open and close over the two-day work window.

Norfolk Southern said the closures are needed to install a second railroad track, part of a broader effort to build out the line. NCDOT has already tied similar intermittent closures in Guilford, Alamance and Orange counties to the same project, beginning June 8. The department says its Piedmont Improvement Program, completed in 2017, remains its largest rail program, and North Carolina has nearly 3,300 miles of track used by passenger and freight trains alike.

The added track matters because it is meant to give trains more room along a busy corridor that carries both passenger and freight traffic. For Alamance County drivers, the immediate cost is time spent on detours; for the rail network, the payoff is fewer bottlenecks as the line carries more traffic over the long term.

Motorists seeking real-time route changes can check DriveNC as the closures shift from crossing to crossing during the work period.