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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.)
The second section of the N.C. 98
bypass between South Main Street
and Capital Boulevard opened Saturday –
not really early Saturday morning as
some thought it would but it was open by
mid-afternoon.
Is it making a difference in
the traffic downtown and on South Main?
“It’s much, much too early to tell,”
Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell said.
He did say he has noticed “a little bit”
of difference.
For one thing,
traditional-calendar schools have let
out for summer vacation, and O’Donnell
said the state or the contractor has not
gotten the signs right yet.
“They don’t have the
trail-blazer signs right,” he said.
Those are the small signs that tell you,
as you approach an intersection, that
N.C. XXX will go to the left or the
right.
“There was also supposed to
have been a notice board at the approach
from the east saying 98 is open to
Capital Boulevard, and it isn’t there. A
lot of people don’t know it’s open.”
Some final work will
continue on this section of the bypass
for another month, but the contractor,
S.T. Wooten of Wilson, completed the
major part of the project about four
months ahead of schedule. The contract
for $21,211,427 was let in late 2003 and
work began early in 2004.
The final section of the
bypass, which will link it back into
N.C. 98 near or at Thompson Mill Road,
will also realign Falls of the Neuse
Road to meet Thompson Mill and close a
section of N.C. 98 (Durham Road). It is
not planned to award the contract for
that construction until August of 2007,
more than a year from now, and
construction will take about two years.
If you want to keep abreast
of road projects, you can go to the
town’s web site at
http://www.wakeforestnc.gov/r
oadandconstructionprojects.aspx.
* * * *
The signs are right there on
the pavement – all those dotted lines
around broken pavement, holes, cracks
and dips – and they signal that the
repair and repaving of South Main
Street (U.S. 1-A) may indeed
begin the week of June 25.
Andy Berry, an assistant
resident engineer in the Department of
Transportation, said last week Rea
Contracting of Charlotte will begin by
patching and adjusting utilities. They
will then pave and last work on the
shoulders. “The patching crew is pretty
good. It will not be as good as when it
is resurfaced, but it will be better
than what you have.” Berry said there
could be a week’s pause between the
patching and the repaving.
Berry’s directions say the
work will extend from Capital Boulevard
to Friendship Chapel Road. The repaving
for the N.C. 98 bypass extended almost
that far south, and there is a painted
note to that effect.
Rea’s contract is one of
three for repaving projects all over
Wake County, and Berry said there were
17 maps (projects) ahead of South Main.
About a month ago Michael Kneis, an
engineer in the District 5 DOT office in
Durham, said the project would cost
about $362,000 and take about three
weeks.
* * * *
Rea will repair and repave
the section of South Main between
Rogers and Forbes roads,
O’Donnell said this week. The town had
originally asked that the contractor
leave that section untouched because the
town has plans to widen that short
section to five lanes. It was listed at
$1 million in the $9.5-million bond
issue for streets approved a year ago.
The project has been pushed
back a bit. O’Donnell said they would be
letting the bids in October or November,
and the widening will not take place
until next spring.
* * * *
At the same time, O’Donnell
said, they will also let contracts for
two or perhaps three roundabouts
on Franklin Street, all part of
the Renaissance Plan.
The two with firm plans are
at East Holding Avenue and East Elm
Avenue, and the third would be for a
not-yet-built extension of East Owen
Avenue that now stops between the Wake
Forest Police Station and Town Hall.
O’Donnell said the decision
to build the third roundabout would
depend on how well the money holds out.
Last spring town voters approved a bond
issue that included $2.4 million to
build the two roundabouts and a treed
median on Franklin between Holding and
Elm.
The Owen Avenue roundabout
would be slightly skewed to include East
Jones Avenue on the other side of
Franklin. Eventually, O’Donnell said,
there will be a fourth roundabout on
Franklin at Wait Avenue (N.C. 98).
O’Donnell said the town’s
consultants, Kimley-Horn, are still
working on the geometry and other
engineering aspects. There will be a
public meeting about the plan, mostly
about the aethetics, once it is about 90
percent complete.
* * * *
Some chaps are due to fly
over from England over the weekend and
work the first three days of next week
making and installing the crosswalks at
the town’s first roundabout
where South Main meets South Avenue
(N.C. 98). O’Donnell said the town had
removed the portion of the contract that
dealt with the stamped concrete
crosswalks (stamped to look like brick)
and transferred it to an English company
with an American branch. Not only will
the new company provide a product that
costs half as much, O’Donnell said, “but
it’s easier to put down and is supposed
to last longer.”
* * * *
A subscriber posed this question: Was it
ever considered to turn the entire
two-lane road around the seminary (Front
Street, North Avenue, North Wingate
Street, South Avenue) into a one-way
road going all the way around the
seminary? This would create a
giant rotary, utilizing its
wonderful benefits at each of the five
or six major roads which feed into this
group of roads today?
Well, yes, that has been
considered, but O’Donnell said it had
been put on the back burner by a mutual
decision by the town board and DOT
“until we can see what effect taking the
traffic on the bypass has.”
DOT, in fact, had even
constructed a computer simulation with
smaller roundabouts at different points
– the underpass, Wingate and North – and
in one demonstration showed little bugs
of vehicles running round and round at
various speeds under various conditions.
That simulation, however, only dealt
with vehicles and did not touch the way
students at Southeastern Baptist
Theological Seminary cross North Wingate
constantly to get to and from the
parking areas and the Ledford Student
Center. “The pedestrians on Wingate have
to be accommodated,” O’Donnell said.
* * * *
The second public meeting about the
U.S. 1 (Capital Boulevard) Corridor
Study is scheduled for Tuesday,
June 27, at Triangle Town Center. The
meetings are generally held from 4 to 7
p.m., but a time and an exact place
within the shopping center will be
announced later.
Meanwhile, the study’s
website has been updated to include
recent presentations as well as detailed
displays about possible frontage road
alternatives along the corridor from
I-540 to inside Franklin County. Find it
at
http://www.ncdot.org/~us1study.
After looking at it, you can submit
comments.
The steering committee for
the study includes representatives from
the Town of Wake Forest, the Town of
Youngsville, the City of Raleigh,
Franklin and Wake counties as well as
the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning
Organization (CAMPO), Triangle
Transportation Authority and the state
Department of Transportation.
The alternatives include 1)
doing nothing except what is already
planned, leaving the major intersections
with traffic signals; 2) or adding
interchanges at major intersections such
as Durant/Perry Creek and U.S. 1-A
(South Main Street) and New Falls of the
Neuse Road with flyovers at some minor
intersections and frontage roads for
access. The highway could be widened to
eight lanes from I-540 to N.C. 98
(Durham Road) with six lanes from there
to U.S. 1-A outside Youngsville. Some
alternatives include bicycle and
high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes and
reversible lanes for heavy traffic
times.
* * * *
Work on the bridge on
Stadium Drive appears to be on
schedule, judging by the removal of the
old bridge, the piles of dirt on either
side of Richland Creek and the amount of
equipment Balfour Beatty Construction
has on site.
The new bridge – 40 feet
wide – should be complete by the end of
August. It will be wide enough for the
planned three traffic lanes to be
constructed at some future date.
Balfour Beatty’s contract
with the state Department of
Transportation is for $1.1 million.
* * * *
Wake Forest, with the help
of federal funds funneled through the
state, is building two sidewalks
around the seminary campus. The
sidewalks, each 5 feet wide, will be 480
feet on the east side of Front Street
from the Roosevelt Avenue underpass to
the intersection of Front and North
Avenue, and 1,200 feet on the south side
of Stadium Drive from North Wingate
Street to past Judson Drive.
Some trees were in the path
of the sidewalks. Town crews removed one
large oak at Front and North. They were
to remove some trees on the seminary
property, but a Raleigh landscape firm,
Realiscape, asked Southeastern Baptist
Theological Seminary for the seven small
maples and 13 crape myrtles to
transplant them. “It will give us a
chance to plant canopy trees,” planner
Lisa Potts said. She plans 21 shade
trees along the Durham Road sidewalk, a
mix of oaks, maples and elms. “When
you’re walking to class, you want some
shade.
The town has a $99,800 grant
through the North Carolina Department of
Transportation Enhancement Program. It
was given on a cost-reimbursement basis.
The town has to pay the full cost for
engineering, design and construction and
then can be reimbursed for up to 80
percent of the cost. The town’s share
will be $19,960. The state is then
reimbursed by the federal government.
The construction is being
done by Narron Construction Inc., who
submitted a bid of $87,900.
* * * *
Work is well underway on the next
section of the Smith Creek
Greenway, this one 1,500 feet
from the Smith Creek Soccer Center to
Rogers Road. A 60-foot bridge will link
the new section with the existing
greenway section in the soccer center.
The Smith Creek Greenway,
which will eventually be a 7-mile
corridor from the Franklin County line
to the Neuse River, is the town’s
number-one greenway priority. Along with
the sections described above, there is
an existing paved section that runs
three-fourths of a mile from Burlington
Mills Road to the river. The town has
acquired much of the right-of-way for
other sections through negotiations with
subdivision developers.
* * * *
When the N.C. 98
bypass is complete from Jones
Dairy Road to Thompson Mill Road, there
will be nine traffic signals on the
4.8-mile limited-access road.
There will be the set at
Jones Dairy Road and business N.C. 98
(Wait Avenue); a set where Heritage Lake
Road intersects but does not cross the
bypass (and you can already see the
clearing for the road); a set at
Franklin Street but not, perhaps, until
that street is extended into Heritage;
the current signals at South Main
Street; a set at Ligon Mill Road when it
is extended; a set at Capital Boulevard;
and signals in Wakefield, at the
realigned Falls of the Neuse Road, and
at Thompson Mill.
Planning Director Chip
Russell said there is still a question
whether Siena Drive – which has sections
north and south of the bypass already –
will be connected. That could be the
tenth intersection with traffic signals.
* * * *
The traffic signal on
Rogers Road at the entrance to
Heritage Elementary and Heritage Middle
School is still slated to be installed
this spring. Mayor Vivian Jones and
other town commissioners vigorously
lobbied for the signal, and state Sen.
Neal Hunt was instrumental in getting it
approved by DOT. |
