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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.)
Morning and night, commuter
and school traffic backs up on
South Main Street from the N.C.
98 bypass as far south as Rogers and
Forbes roads, as far north as Wake
Forest Elementary. The reason? The state
Department of Transportation has
designated the bypass as the major road
and gives that a longer green signal,
skimping on the green for South Main.
News flash to DOT: South
Main bears the major traffic load now.
Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell said
he has been trying to tell the Division
5 office, but there has been no action
thus far.
Division 5 headquarters are
in Durham, and the number is 560-6851.
UPDATE: It may just be
possible that DOT has acted. There was a
small knot of men in orange vests
staring at a piece of equipment at the
bypass at noon, and the 3:30 car crunch
did not seem to happen.
* * * *
There is a bit of good news
about the draft Transportation
Improvement Plan (TIP) for 2007-2013.
Although letting of the
contract for the third leg of the
N.C. 98 bypass – from Capital
Boulevard to Thompson Mill Road with a
realignment of Falls of the Neuse Road –
has been delayed from 2007 to 2008, the
information about the project in the TIP
available at the DOT web site is written
in
green.
This is a distinction given to very few
projects and means it is a “deliverable
STIP project.” That appears to be
DOT-talk for something they really do
mean to build. The construction cost is
listed at $16 million.
DOT apparently also plans –
though not in green ink – to continue a
sidewalk project along underway around
the campus, along Stadium Drive and
along Durham Road. The cost is $73,000.
DOT will build half a mile of the Olde
Mill Stream greenway for $168,000 and
begin construction of the streetscape
project on South White Street in 2007 at
a cost of $114,000.
In addition, four bridge
projects over Smith and Austin Creeks on
different roads are listed in green but
not scheduled for construction until
2008 or 2009.
* * * *
The story for the U.S. 401
widening is dismal.
Construction of the leg from
Ligon Mill/Mitchell Mill up the hills to
Jonesville Road has been delayed several
times and now is being delayed again
from 2008 to 2009. The cost is set at $8
million.
In 2012 DOT plans to buy the
right-of-way for the Rolesville bypass –
Jonesville Road to N.C. 98 – at a cost
of $2.4 million, but the $32.4 million
for its construction is unfunded. There
is also no money for the rest of the
18.5 miles from Raleigh to Louisburg.
* * * *
Please do not strain your
eyes watching for Rea Contracting to
begin patching and repaving South
Main Street (U.S. 1-A) and N.C. 98
(Durham Road and Wait Avenue).
The crews will not appear until sometime
in September, maybe later.
Steve Leonard, the resident
engineer for this part of the state
DOT’s Division 5, said Rea had
“overextended themselves” and had done a
lot more patching than the resurfacing
crews could cover.
Rea had a number of
contracts to repair and repave area
roads this summer.
The work in Wake Forest,
estimated to cost
$362,000, should take about three weeks.
* * * *
The web site for the
U.S. 1 (Capital Boulevard) Corridor
study has been updated. You can
find it
http://www.ncdot.org/~us1study.
People at the July 27 public
meeting in Living Word Family Church
learned the project is estimated now at
$400 million.
Also go to
http://www.ncdot.org/doh/preconstruct/
tpb/shc/studies/US1 for
information about all the corridor
studies underway in the state. A lot of
local people use U.S. 70 from Raleigh to
Morehead City, and of course it is a
hurricane or disaster evacuation route.
Although the Clayton bypass ($179
million) is underway and work on the
Goldsboro bypass ($234 million) is
expected to begin in 2008, none of the
other bypass projects are funded.
* * * *
As the Gazette reported
recently, the estimates now for the
Franklin Street roundabouts, median
and landscaping have risen from
the $2.4 million projected last year and
included in the $9.5-million bond issue
to $4.2 million.
Finance Director Aileen
Staples intends to sell $4.2 million in
those bonds in September along with
either $1 million or $1.5 million to
widen South Main Street to
either four or five lanes from Rogers
Road to Forbes Road. A four-lane width
would save on right-of-way acquisition
costs but would mean a concrete median.
O’Donnell has said the town
may not be able to afford the entire
cost of the Franklin Street project at
one time, and the bids will be
structured to allow the town to
construct one section at a time. The
project is part of the town’s
Renaissance Plan.
The increased cost,
O’Donnell said, were mostly because of
high oil prices.
The engineers and staff at
Kimley-Horne Associates are finishing
plans for the street, incorporating
ideas from the July 31 public meeting.
The next step will be purchasing
right-of-way and then sending out a
request for bids.
The other projects in the
2005 street bond issue were 1)
construction of part of the North Loop
at $3.3 million, 2) widening Stadium
Drive to three lanes from Rock Springs
Road to Capital Boulevard at $2.2
million and 3) building a sidewalk on
North White Street from Juniper Avenue
to Flaherty Park at $600,000.
* * * *
The North Carolina Department of
Transportation plans to put up signs for
a truck route through Wake
Forest, Deputy Town Manager Roe
O’Donnell said recently. The signs will
probably be erected at the east and west
approaches to town on N.C. 98 and on
South Main Street where it nears the
bypass.
* * * *
In the future, there will be
at least nine sets of traffic signals on
the 4.8-mile N.C. 98 bypass.
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.
* * * *
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. |
