The Surf City Bridge’s “Temporary” Stoplight Is Still Up. The Real $16 Million Fix Is Years Away.

Correction: This article has been updated since it was first published. See the correction.

In late April, we reported that NCDOT was installing a temporary stoplight on the island side of the Surf City bridge, billed as a two-week experiment to see if metering traffic could ease the worst bottleneck on the way onto Topsail Island.

Three months later, that “temporary” light is still standing. And behind it sits a much bigger fix that has been in the works far longer than the light itself: a $16.1 million NCDOT project to rebuild the whole approach, funded and scheduled, that the department has been planning since 2017.

The lone signal sits a few hundred feet before the roundabout on the island side of the bridge. In addition to controlling the flow of vehicles onto the island, it has also been collecting data. Specifically, it meters vehicles at intervals before they reach the traffic circle that splits inbound traffic onto South Topsail Drive and North New River Drive, so the roundabout doesn’t get overwhelmed.

That signal was put into place on May 6th, but a week prior NCDOT’s announcement put it plainly: with busy season approaching, the roundabout could not handle the demand.

Almost 21,000 vehicles a day cross the bridge, according to WECT, and not everyone was convinced a two-week test in early May, before the real summer crowds arrived, would tell NCDOT much. “One summer it took me five hours to get off of that island,” Michelle Proscia, told WECT in May. Her coworker Maggie Proscia saw a case for it anyway: a lot of drivers, she said, are simply confused about how to enter a roundabout in the first place.

The early data leaned in the signal’s favor. By May 20, NCDOT and the town extended the pilot “for several more weeks,” reporting zero crashes near the roundabout and traffic moving more efficiently, with backups limited to peak travel times.

Neither NCDOT nor the town has published a hard end date since.

It’s one piece of a broader push: on June 27, Surf City and Topsail Beach launched a joint summer traffic management program, splitting a $60,000 tab to station personnel at NC-50/NC-210 intersections on weekends and holidays. It got tested fast: over the Fourth of July weekend, easily the busiest stretch of the summer, crews were out directing traffic by hand because the signal, the roundabout, and drivers left to their own judgment weren’t moving cars fast enough on their own. “This partnership allows us to take proactive steps in seeking to improve traffic flow while gathering valuable information that will help guide future transportation decisions,” Surf City Mayor Teresa B. Batts said when the program launched.

The signal and the weekend crews are both stopgaps.

The $16 Million Fix

The real fix is a $16.1 million project (NCDOT designation R-5900) that rebuilds the whole approach: NC-210, NC-50/210 (known locally as Roland Avenue), and Belt Road, from Belt Road down to Charlie Medlin Drive.

The project plan adds turn lanes and medians on every leg, doubles the westbound left-turn lanes on Roland Avenue, and places a brand new signal at NC-50/210 and Charlie Medlin Drive. It replaces two earlier concepts, a bigger multi-lane roundabout and a “quadrant road” routing traffic through Caretta and Charlie Medlin Drives, both dropped after a September 2024 public meeting found them too costly or too disruptive. Design work and environmental review continue through January 2027, right-of-way acquisition is expected to start in November 2027, and construction is not scheduled to begin until May 2030.

Why This Stretch Keeps Getting Busier

This roundabout isn’t the bridge’s only one, there’s a matching circle on the mainland side too, but it’s the one absorbing years of steady commercial and residential growth stacked along the same run of NC-50/NC-210, signed locally as Roland Avenue, that all funnels toward the bridge.

Walmart Neighborhood Market has anchored the top of the corridor for years. Publix followed in 2018, opening its 48,000-square-foot store at the Arboretum at Surf City on May 26 of that year. Petco moved in next door in April 2023. Between the two stores and Walmart, that intersection alone now pulls in a steady stream of daily errand traffic this stretch never used to see.

Past Food Lion, the growth sits deeper off the road, at Triton Village. Salty Turtle Beer Co., Pender County’s first brewery, has been a fixture there since 2017, a big enough draw for locals that it likely helped inspire the businesses that followed it into the same plaza: Coastal Wing & Spirits Co. and Margherita Pizza Co. anchor the same cluster, and more recently Sundial Coffee and Tea, Surf City Smash, and Nautical Bowls have filled in around them. Surfin Hot Chicken opened nearby on Charlie Medlin Drive, the exact side street where NCDOT’s R-5900 project plans to add that brand new signal.

A little further along, High Tides & Good Vibes, a 16-lane bowling, laser tag, and family entertainment complex, opened in December 2025. Waterside, the 240-acre D.R. Horton community between the highway and the bridge, has been open and filling in for a few years now: the current plan calls for 425 homes across four neighborhoods (the Retreat, the Dunes, the Cottages, and the Cove), scaled back from an original entitlement north of 3,200 units. Every household already living there adds daily errands, school runs, and weekend trips to the same road NCDOT is trying to fix.

Closer to the mainland traffic circle near J.H. Batts Road, Surf City Fitness relocated in May 2026 from its longtime spot in the Walmart plaza to a newly renovated space at 14160 NC-50. A short distance away at 14382 Roland Avenue, a “Coming Soon” sign for a second Agave Azul, a sister location to the Mexican restaurant that’s served Sneads Ferry for years, has stood over a cleared lot since at least February 2024. Construction only started recently, more than two years after that sign went up. Same pattern as the rest of the corridor: businesses and buildings filling in, sometimes slowly, right along the road NCDOT is trying to fix.

Who’s Actually Filling Up the Road

It’s easy to blame tourists for the backup at the bridge, and plenty of the 21,000 daily vehicles are visitors headed to the beach. But most of what lines this stretch, Salty Turtle, Coastal Wing & Spirits, Margherita Pizza, Sundial, Surf City Smash, Nautical Bowls, Surfin Hot Chicken, High Tides & Good Vibes, Surf City Fitness, the second Agave Azul, is locally owned, and every one of them is counting on the same traffic that clogs the roundabout to keep their tables, lanes, and equipment full. Waterside’s residents aren’t tourists either, they’re neighbors adding trips of their own, year-round. NCDOT’s $16.1 million fix is being paid for with state and federal road dollars, not by the businesses and developers whose growth is a real part of why the road needs fixing in the first place. Worth sitting with, next time the wait at the roundabout runs long.

None of this fixes today’s backup at the bridge. Until 2030, the tools are the signal, the weekend crews, and drivers adjusting their own timing. Topsail Guide’s live traffic page tracks all four of the area’s known trouble spots, including this roundabout and the NC-50/NC-210 “funnel” where Publix and Petco plaza traffic merges in ahead of the bridge. If your business sits along this stretch and isn’t yet in our free business directory, now is a good time to get listed.

Have you watched this corridor fill in over the past few years, or noticed a difference at the roundabout this summer? We want to hear from readers who drive it regularly.

Sourced from NCDOT’s project announcement and R-5900 project materials, reporting by WECT, and the Town of Surf City.

Correction: An earlier version framed the temporary signal as having led to the $16.1 million NC-210/NC-50 project (NCDOT R-5900). NCDOT records show R-5900 has been in development since 2017, years before the 2026 pilot signal; the two are separate efforts addressing the same congestion. The article has been updated, with thanks to a reader for flagging it.