The double yellow centerline on Main Street between Broad and Second streets is to be realigned, Town Manager Rhett White told the Columbia Board of Aldermen August 5.

The plan is to scrape and remark, moving the centerline seven feet to the northward, leaving space along the southern side for vehicle parking. The parking area will be delineated by a continuous white stripe. Traffic lanes will be 10 feet wide.  That is the arrangement that existed before the recent resurfacing work.

Marking of parking spaces on much of the first block of Broad Street will be at a 30-degree angle from the curb rather than the previous 40 degrees. This will mean that longer vehicles will project outward a lesser distance from the curb into the traffic lane.

Two handicapped parking spaces will be lost: one in front of the courthouse and the other just north of the post office. Neither met federal specifications, White said. The town is attempting to persuade NCDOT in install a handicapped parking space on the east side of Broad Street near Main Street, opposite the courthouse square.

Main Street between Scuppernong Drive and Broad Street, and Broad Street between Main Street and Grindle Hill bridge, are owned and regulated by NCDOT.

The parking spaces, along with several crosswalk designations, will be marked as soon as NCDOT can get to it, White reported. The markings were not in the resurfacing contract with Barnhill Contracting Co.

NCDOT will also refresh the double yellow lines on Main Street from Broad Street to the river and at Grindle Hill bridge, he added.

Yellow “No Parking” areas along curbs and in letters are to be painted by town employees.

Sandra Owens, mayor pro tem, pointed out that only four inches remain between the street surface and the sidewalk at the post office. She worried that heavy rainfall could easily result in flooding unless underground drainage pipes are clear of debris.