CHARLOTTE – AAA Carolinas has published its year-end evaluation of some transportation or traffic-related incidents – both positive and negative – in North Carolina.

The list, published in the January/February edition of Go magazine, includes praise for good decisions or outcomes and questions some that are poor.

Red Light: DOT board’s decision to build a section of I-795 between Wilson and Goldsboro with only 5.2 inches of asphalt – about one-third the pavement thickness recommended for highways carrying tractor-trailer traffic. Opened in 2006, the road is breaking up with a short-term fix estimated to cost $626,000 and more costs to come.

Green Light: North Carolina’s 21st Century Transportation Committee’s yearlong search for new ways to fund transportation while the state loses money from gas tax revenues (the legislature capped the tax at 30 cents a gallon). New taxes will be painful but North Carolina’s roads and bridges are in bad shape and getting worse, the magazine says.

Red Light: DOT fails to keep all lanes under construction on major interstates open during heavily traveled holiday weekends.

Green Light: The State Bureau of Investigation looks into dismissed impaired- driving cases to investigate tampering that occurred in Johnston County.

Red Light: DOT Transportation Board member Louis Sewell Jr. resigned amid disclosures that he had steered nearly $400,000 in state road money to two projects near property he owned in Jacksonville, increasing the value of his property.

Green Light: N.C. State Highway Patrol’s support of a four-month review of its hiring, training and supervision policies by an outside consultant that resulted in 40 recommendations for improvement, while noting that the department is “highly professional.”

Red Light: DOT and Virginia-based Skanska construction company failed to meet a spring 2007 deadline to finish 5.5 miles of Charlotte’s Interstate 485 Outer Belt. Skanska blames rain for the delays, despite two years of drought in the area. DOT failed to obtain rights-of-way in a timely fashion.

Red Light: Wake County defense attorneys Mark A. Perry and Walter B. Rand decided to run for judgeships after being convicted of misdemeanor counts of impaired driving in separate incidents. Both lost in the November election.