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(Road roundup is a standing feature of
the Gazette, designed to keep people
informed about the progress of the
various street and road projects in
town. New projects or updated projects
will appear at the top of each week’s
column in
blue.)
It has been raining and we are all blue
while the streets go unpaved.
Rogers Road, which was
closed to reconstruct the intersection
with Marshall Farm Road, has been
reopened. The change is subtle, but
essentially the peak of the hill just to
the east of Marshall Farm Road was cut
down by about 4 feet to improve the
sight distance.
Wake Forest residents, victims of
interminably long waits along North and
South Main streets, are well aware there
has been a flurry of street construction
and reconstruction this summer and fall.
On South Main Street
between Capital Boulevard and Ligon Mill
Road, Lanier Construction has almost
completed the widening to five lanes,
Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell just
before Christmas. Only “tiny odds and
ends” remain to be done.
However, you can expect
bumps and lumps until fair weather
returns in four months or so. “In the
spring the state will come back in, mill
down, put on a leveling course and
resurface” from Capital to the N.C. 98
bypass, O’Donnell said.
The town may ask the North
Carolina Department of Transportation
(or its contractor) not to mill out and
resurface South Main from Rogers
Road to Forbes Road “because
we’re going to widen that,” O’Donnell
said.
The widening project is
definitely going ahead though the
timetable is not yet firm. O’Donnell
said the plans are 25 percent complete,
after which the town will have to buy
the needed right-of-way. Construction
could take place this coming summer.
“It’s a fairly involved project,” he
said, but he does not anticipate it will
involve destroying any building.
That is good news for people
who appreciate Wake Forest history who
had feared the widening might mean the
end of the two-story grey building on
the west side of South Main just south
of the Forbes Road intersection. That
was once Forestville Heights, a gas
station (which is why it is so close to
the street) and a place where college
students could buy beer. Until the
1970s, when the town charter was
rewritten, sales of beer or liquor were
forbidden within town and within a mile
of the town limits.
The widening from Rogers
Road to Forbes Road was a $1 million
part of the $9.5-million bond issue for
streets that town residents approved in
May. One reason for the widening,
then-Commissioner Rob Bridges said, was
to ease the traffic tie-ups as parents
left their children in the morning and
picked them up in the afternoon at Wake
Forest-Rolesville Middle School.
This year’s second large
project – and the one which has caused
the recent traffic problems – is the
combined roundabout and
resurfacing along North and
South Main streets.
O’Donnell said the widening
necessary for the roundabout where South
Main meets the seminary campus has been
done. The curb and gutter for the
outside of the roundabout is in place.
Next Lanier Construction will build the
inside curb and gutter, replace a
sidewalk and reconstruct an entrance to
the church.
Nothing more may be done
until better weather, O’Donnell said.
“We’re in discussions with the
contractor about what to do and when.”
Lanier subcontracted the
resurfacing of North and South
Main to the S.T. Wooten
Corporation, which has completed most of
the work except for some tie-ins to
adjacent streets. Lanier will build the
new curb and gutter, pull and reset
granite curbing, and make the sidewalks
handicapped-accessible.
The resurfacing has left
some obvious, though gentle, dips and
bumps. That is usual for such an old
street with a low speed limit, 25 miles
per hour, O’Donnell said. “They don’t
use the same kind of paving equipment on
a street like that as they would on a
higher-speed road. They try to pull it
as level as they can, but they don’t run
a profilometer on it.”
The N.C. 98 bypass
from South Main to Capital Boulevard is
now scheduled to open in May, O’Donnell
said. An earlier, optimistic prediction
had been that the work could be
completed by the end of the 2005. “The
weather broke and they lost their window
of opportunity.” O’Donnell said S.T.
Wooten will do in May what they had
planned for December. That includes
closing Retail Drive for five days.
There is progress on the
third section of the bypass, which will
run from Capital Boulevard to Thompson
Mill Road. Wally Bowman, an engineer
with DOT District 5 in Durham, said
earlier this year that purchase of
right-of-way for the third section began
this year and construction is scheduled
to begin in 2007.
That third bypass portion
includes a great deal of work at the
western end to widen Falls of the Neuse
Road and relocate it to the east and
change the connection between Thompson
Mill Road and the bypass. One existing
section of N.C. 98 will be abandoned. A
map showing the changes is available for
view at the town planning department on
Brooks Street.
One idea being tossed around
town hall is to extend East Owen
Avenue from where it now ends
between the police department and town
hall down to South Franklin Street. It
depends on where the new town hall is
located, O’Donnell said. If it is built
in the southeast corner of Brooks Street
and East Owen, one possibility is to
increase access to the town hall by
extending Owen to Franklin and building
a roundabout there.
Meanwhile, town staff is
working on the Renaissance Plan
projects: roundabouts on South
Franklin at the Elm Avenue and
East Holding Avenue intersections. The
spring bond issue included $2.4 million
for the roundabouts and a treed median
along South Franklin between them.
S.T. Wooten is also the
contractor for a small project, building
a 100-foot section along Stadium
Drive. O’Donnell said Wooten was
waiting to proof roll, test for density
and then pave.
Plans still are for DOT to
rebuild and widen the Stadium Drive
bridge over Richland Creek in 2006.
Another small project but
one long needed is the sidewalk with
curb and gutter along the west side of
North Allen Road. It will
be finished soon, O’Donnell said. |
