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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 at least nine months since
state Sen. Neal Hunt persuaded the state
Department of Transportation to install
traffic signals on Rogers Road at the
entrance to Heritage Elementary and
Middle schools, but they are finally in
place.
They were still shrouded in
black plastic at noon Wednesday but they
should be operational soon, to the
relief of a lot of parents. Mayor Vivian
Jones and town commissioners vigorously
lobbied for the signals.
* * * *
There were comments but
there was mostly sticker shock at last
week’s public meeting about the possible
eight-laning of Capital Boulevard from
I-540 north to U.S. 1-A north of
Youngsville.
The estimated cost today is
$400 million – and with the cost of a
barrel of oil at $73 or so, war and
uncertainty in the Middle East that cost
will almost surely rise.
You can study the plans at
your leisure by going to
http://www.ncdot.org/~us1study.
* * * *
Now that the public meeting
has been held, the engineers and staff
at Kimley-Horne Associates will finish
the plans for the Franklin Street
roundabouts, median and landscaping.
Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell said
the next step will be right-of-way
acquisition and then a request for bids
for the project.
O’Donnell is already
anticipating the bids may be higher than
the town can afford at one time and may
have to be bid separately. “Bids have
gone through the roof lately, basically
because of the increased cost of oil,”
he said. Asphalt is an oil product, and
construction equipment runs on gasoline
and diesel fuel.
A year ago Wake Forest
voters approved $9.5 million in bonds
for street and sidewalk improvements, a
package that designated $2.4 million for
the Franklin Street project that is also
part of the Renaissance Plan.
The remaining money was
designated as: $3.3 million to build
part of the North Loop, $1 million to
widen South Main Street to five lanes
from Rogers to Forbes Road, $2.2 million
to widen Stadium to three lanes from
Rock Springs Road to Capital Boulevard,
and $600,000 to build a sidewalk on
North White Street from Juniper Avenue
to Flaherty Park.
* * * *
Money is also an issue for
the South Main Street
project to widen the road from Rogers to
Forbes. O’Donnell said they are now
deciding what the cross-section of the
street will be. He still anticipates
going to bid in the fall with
construction in the spring.
* * * *
Crews for CSX Railroad have completed
their work at the Ligon Mill Road
crossing and the road has been re-opened
for traffic.
* * * *
In light of DOT’s slowdown
in construction projects because the
money is not stretching to cover them
all, locally people may wonder about the
status of the third leg of the
N.C. 98 bypass. Mayor Vivian
Jones said this week there is no need to
worry.
The funds for the final
section from Capital Boulevard (U.S. 1)
to Thompson Mill Road come from federal
government for surface transportation.
“The metropolitan planning organizations
have the authority to decide where that
money is spent, and those funds are
assigned to CAMPO,” Jones said. CAMPO
(Capital Area Metropolitan Planning
Organization) has designated those funds
to finish the bypass.”
Jones said she was very
vocal about the designation for the
bypass and keeps an eagle eye on it.
That final section of the
bypass will also include a realignment
of Falls of the Neuse Road to meet
Thompson Mill and closing a section of
N.C. 98 (Durham Road) between Capital
Boulevard and Thompson Mill.
The construction contract is
due to be let in August of 2007.
In the future, there will be
at least nine sets of traffic signals on
the 4.8-mile limited-access road.
We already have those at
Jones Dairy Road and business N.C. 98
(Wait Avenue), those at South Main
Street and the three sets at Capital
Boulevard.
Between Jones Dairy and
South Main, there may be signals where
Heritage Lake Road intersects but does
not cross the bypass, and it is very
likely there will be signals at the
intersection when Franklin Street is
extended into Heritage.
To the west of South Main,
there will certainly be signals when
Ligon Mill Road is built to meet or
cross the bypass.
In the third section, we can
count on at least one set of signals in
Wakefield, another at the realigned
Falls of the Neuse Road, and a third at
Thompson Mill Road.
Depending on the development
of the land and whether the northern and
southern portions of Siena Drive are
connected, there could be another set of
signals.
If you want to keep abreast
of local road projects, you can go to
the town’s web site at
http://www.wakeforestnc.gov/
roadandconstructionprojects.aspx.
* * * *
Rea Contracting crews have not finished
in Wakefield and there has been no
progress for the planned repair and
repaving along South Main Street
(U.S. 1-A) and N.C. 98 (Durham Road and
Wait Avenue).
However, the company has
told O’Donnell work will begin on or
before Aug. 10, their drop-dead date
after which the work cannot be completed
in the contract time. The work,
estimated to cost $362,000, should take
about three weeks, which mean it will
probably still be ongoing when Wake
County’s traditional-calendar schools
reopen on Aug. 25.
The paint is getting faint
on the pavement of the two streets, but
the white dotted lines outline the areas
due to be patched and repaired.
* * * *
One project – the new
bridge on Stadium Drive – is
scheduled to be completed on or before
Aug. 24, the day before school opens.
Balfour Beatty Construction is building
the bridge over Richland Creek for $1.1
million. When finished, it will be 40
feet wide, wide enough for the three
traffic lanes planned for the future.
* * * *
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. |
