On Nov. 8, the state will close Winecoff Avenue and Misenheimer Drive in Concord. At McGill Avenue, the state will install four quadrant gates and smooth the crossing.

“By the end of the week, you’ll never know there had been crossings there,” said Michael Shumsky, an engineer with the N.C. Rail Division in Raleigh. “We remove all the pavement, signs and lights. If you leave them there, it’s just a constant reminder to the community.”

Some Kannapolis residents have not forgotten closings earlier this year at Plymouth and East C streets and Ebenezer Road. Now they’re saying Kannapolis City Council incumbents don’t deserve re-election because they supported those closings.

Kimball Street resident Tom H. Gardner is chairman of Citizens Political Action League, a group that has fought closings.

“I’ve talked to well over 2,000 people in the past few weeks who are so upset you wouldn’t believe it,” Gardner said Thursday. “ ... Right now, I’m out putting little nasty signs up all over the world.”

Kannapolis City Councilman Phil Meacham — who is not up for re-election this year — put up his own sign Thursday along Main Street where Ebenezer Road once crossed the train tracks. Today, Ebenezer ends at North Ridge Avenue. “Don’t forget who voted to close the crossing,” the sign says.

City Council candidate Emory Strickland said he’s promising to fight any more closings. “I’m going to get votes for that,” Strickland said. “I’ve never seen people this mad. They’ve really got the people upset, is all I can tell you.”

The Kannapolis City Council voted 6-1 in March to support the closings, with Meacham opposed. They were closed a month later.

Incumbent Councilman Bob Misenheimer said the decision was a safety issue. “We feel like we made the right decision,” he said. “There have been other closings in Kannapolis. We feel like with all of the rail traffic coming through, it’s a matter of common sense.”

The state has no plans to block other crossings in Kannapolis in the next two years. But Shumsky said the state will eventually have to close more to reduce accidents.

The state has closed nine crossings in Salisbury. It typically tries to close only those crossings it deems redundant and tries to build overpasses and parallel roads for major crossings when space allows.

In 1998, North Carolina had 109 collisions between automobiles and trains, resulting in 15 deaths and 48 injuries.

In Kannapolis, a state-sponsored train struck a pickup in July. Just this month, an Amtrak train dragged a woman’s car several hundred feet after it became stuck on tracks, and a Concord man lying in the tracks in north Kannapolis was struck and killed by a train.

Freight traffic has increased along the rail corridor since Norfolk Southern Corp. and Conrail took joint control of CSXon June 1. Daily freight trains through Kannapolis have increased from 39 before the move to 49 today.

Six passenger trains, including Amtrak and North Carolina’s Piedmont and Carolinian, also pass through each day. And the N.C. Rail Division hopes to begin high-speed passenger rail service from Charlotte to Raleigh.

“There will continue to be more train traffic, and there will certainly continue to be more vehicular traffic,” Shumsky said.

To relieve all this detoured automobile traffic, The N.C. Rail Division is now considering bridges over the train tracks at East Universal or Dakota streets in south Kannapolis and at 22nd Street on the north side of town. It may replace a crossing at Winecoff School Road with one at Mount Olivet Road. Construction would not begin on those overpasses for at least 10 years.

Gardner says that’s not soon enough.