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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.)
We are still waiting for Rea
Contracting of Charlotte to begin
repairing and repaving South Main
Street (U.S. 1-A) and N.C. 98 (Durham
Road and Wait Avenue). The
repairs will be made to those sections
you see outlined in dotted white paint.
The target date was June 25.
Andy Berry, an assistant
resident engineer in the Department of
Transportation, said recently Rea
Contracting 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.
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.
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.
* * * *
The rains from tropical
storm Alberto on June 14 constituted a
50-year event, Deputy Town Manager Roe
O’Donnell said last week, with the town
receiving 5.56 inches in 10 hours.
One question was about the
persistent pools of rainwater on North
Main Street.
“Is North Main Street
doomed?” Commissioner Frank Drake asked.
The street does flood during even small
rains.
There are a number of
challenges, O’Donnell said. The drain
structures are very old. (Could they
have been there when the street was
paved in 1923?) Also, the street is
flat. North Main is maintained by the
state, which does not have the money to
replace or clean the drains as needed.
“We, the town, have been cleaning out
those structures.”
As a result, O’Donnell said,
there was ponding, but “We didn’t get
the lake effect on North Main Street
this time. It’s as good as its going to
be without some very major work.”
The rain caused some damage
locally.
Just over the county line in
Granville County, Woodland Church
Road remains closed after
rushing water shouldered aside drainage
pipes and cut out a section of road. The
state Department of Transportation said
it will take about two weeks to repair.
At least one very heavy
support for a temporary bridge on
Stadium Drive was washed down
Richland Creek to the Durham Road
crossing. Balfour Beatty has a contract
with the state to rebuild the bridge at
a cost of $1.1 million. The contract
calls for the work to be complete by the
end of August.
* * * *
The second public meeting
about the U.S. 1 (Capital
Boulevard) Corridor Study was
scheduled for Tuesday, June 27, at
Triangle Town Center, but it has been
delayed to some date in July. The time
and place 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 and backage
(their word, not mine) 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.
* * * *
The second section of the
N.C. 98 bypass between South
Main Street and Capital Boulevard opened
Saturday, June 10, and the jury is still
out whether it is reducing traffic
through the heart of town and down South
Main Street. O’Donnell is hoping for a
50 percent reduction.
Final work on the bypass
section will continue through mid-July.
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/roadandcon
structionprojects.aspx.
* * * *
Rea will repair and repave the section
of South Main between Rogers and
Forbes roads,
O’Donnell said recently. 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.
* * * *
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.
* * * *
Wake Forest, with the help
of federal funds funneled through the
state, has built two sidewalks
around the seminary campus. The
sidewalks, each 5 feet wide, extend 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.
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 was done by
Narron Construction Inc., who submitted
a bid of $87,900.
* * * *
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.
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. |
