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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.)
There are two street items
on the Wake Forest Town Board agenda for
May 15: a contract for the engineering
and design to widen South Main
Street to three lanes (a turn
lane and two travel lanes) and a
discussion about including paving for
some or all the town’s unpaved
streets in this year’s budget.
* * * *
A reader has asked when Ligon Mill
Road will be extended from South
Main Street to N.C. 98.
We will have the answer to
some extent on May 15 when the Wake
Forest Town Board votes whether to grant
a special use permit for Alexan at Ligon
Mill, a 288-unit apartment complex
planned for just east of The Shoppes at
Caveness Farm. The town planners are
requesting that the developer, Trammell
Crow Residential, build two lanes of
Ligon Mill Road from its existing dead
end to Caveness Farms Avenue. They are
also required to grade the remaining two
lanes.
The big stumbling block for
the road has been the sewer pump station
where it ends next to Wal-Mart; the pump
station can only be removed when there
is a gravity sewer line to take its
place. The developers will be building
an over-sized sewer line to serve future
growth in the area; the town says it
will work with Trammell Crow Residential
and the City of Raleigh to expedite
removing the pump station.
The developers of Reynolds
Mill, Parker & Orleans of Cary, will be
building the eastern two lanes of Ligon
Mill Road from their property line up to
the N.C. 98 bypass eventually, although
the only approved plans thus far are for
the southern, residential part of the
development. When the town’s
comprehensive planning committee sent
the residential plan forward in 2005,
the proviso was that the developer would
build two lanes of Ligon Mill from
Caveness Farms Avenue to the bypass
before the bypass was completed in 2006.
At that time it was thought construction
of The Shoppes at Caveness Farm would
happen soon along with the apartments
which will be superseded by Alexan. Now
Parker & Orleans must build two lanes of
Ligon Mill to the bypass when the 75th
building permit is issued.
Completion of at least two
lanes of Ligon Mill is also a
requirement for The Shoppes at Caveness
Farm, which has an approved master plan
but where major construction has not
begun.
Building Ligon Mill north of
bypass will depend on the development of
that area. The town’s transportation
plan does call for it to extend to N.C.
98 (Durham Road) in the vicinity of the
Wake Forest Business Park and McDonald’s
and then go northward. Some of the
future alignment depends on the plans
for the Capital Boulevard (U.S. 1)
corridor plan.
* * * *
The Town of Wake Forest had a traffic
study done for the proposed Gateway
Commons shopping center on Jones Dairy,
the bypass, the future Friendship Chapel
and the future Heritage Lake Road, and
it includes some major changes on Jones
Dairy Road.
The study talks about the
two bridge replacements on Jones Dairy
that are planned for 2009 and recommends
the connection of Friendship Chapel to
Jones Dairy be done in that same year
when traffic will be minimal. The
bridges will be replaced sequentially,
one at a time, because there are homes
between them. The bridge just south of
Friendship Chapel will have a 79-foot
cross-section, large enough for two
travel lanes and a northbound left-turn
lane. “This width is also sufficient to
handle a five-lane section and a
sidewalk in the future in the event
Jones Dairy Road is widened to a
four-lane facility.”
At the intersection of Jones
Dairy and Chalk Road, the study
recommends left- and right-turn lanes on
Jones Dairy and Chalk Road and
monitoring traffic volumes to see if a
signal is needed.
The study does not include
anything about the town’s plan to
re-align Chalk Road to meet the entrance
of Bowling Green subdivision, a move
which would put it farther from the
bridge and stream.
There will also be turn
lanes in both directions on Jones Dairy
at its intersection with Friendship
Chapel. Again, the traffic volumes will
be monitored to determine when a traffic
signal should be installed.
* * * *
This column had told readers
they could find information about road
projects at the town’s web site, but
that is no longer true. The list of
street projects has not been updated
since last fall.
* * * *
Did it take this long to
build a pyramid? Earlier this month
CAMPO Senior Transportation Planner
Kenneth Withrow said it will take 20 to
30 years and $487 million to make
Capital Boulevard into an eight-lane
limited access thoroughfare. The cost
estimate is in 2006 dollars so we can be
assured the amount will continue to
rise.
The preferred alternative
has three regular travel lanes and an
HOV lane on each side, a raised median
and access roads in front and in back of
homes and businesses along the highway.
There would be 10 interchanges where
traffic could get on or off intersecting
roads and nine grade-separated
crossings. One of those fly-overs is
planned at Stadium Road.
In the short term, Withrow
said, CAMPO (Capital Area Metropolitan
Planning Organization) plans bus service
in and around Wake Forest that will go
to Raleigh and the Research Triangle
Park.
Also, Wake Forest Planning
Director Chip Russell said two weeks ago
CAMPO will try to place two of the
interchanges on the state’s
Transportation Improvement Plan – those
at South Main-New Falls of Neuse and
Durant-Perry Creek.
The next step is for the
affected governments to adopt a
memorandum of understanding for the
project. The changes would reach from
the I-540 interchange to U.S. 1-A north
of Youngsville.
You can see the study area
at
http://www.ncdot.org/~us1study.
* * * *
When the Bowling Green
subdivision was approved in 2004 – 283
single-family homes and 94 townhouses –
the plan included an entrance/exit on
Wait Avenue (N.C. 98) that was offset
from the Bishop’s Grant entrance across
the street by 200 or so feet, depending
on who measured. The state Department of
Transportation and the Town of Wake
Forest said the entrances/exits should
line up, a safety measure on a
heavily-traveled road in an area with
five driveways within half a mile. DOT
and the town had agreed to a Bowling
Green entrance on Jones Dairy Road at
the Chalk Road intersection.
Many of the residents along
Wait were concerned, too, and urged the
entrances be aligned.
When the plan was approved,
the town specified the interior street
from Jones Dairy Road to Wait Avenue be
completed before Jan. 1, 2006, because
DOT planned to close the northern
portion of Jones Dairy Road early in
2006 to rebuild two bridges.
“The Bowling Green
connection (to Wait Avenue) has finally
cleared DWQ and we have the construction
plans in-house now,” Director of
Engineering Eric Keravuori said last
week. “It will get started as soon as it
gets approved by the town within a month
or so.” (DWQ is the state Division of
Water Quality.)
The entrance will be aligned
with the Bishop’s Grant entrance.
As for the bridges,
Keravuori said DOT had delayed the
reconstructions, which are now scheduled
for 2008 or 2009.
For a full account of the
issues about the driveway, see the March
9 and March 16, 2005, issues of the
Gazette in the archives.
* * * *
This is an update about the
Star Road study the traffic consulting
firm of Kimley-Horn and Associates is
doing for the Town of Wake Forest.
“Yes, we are the client so
that we can get a fair and objective
opinion. However, the cost will be
proportionately divided up and assigned
to the individual projects so that the
town can be reimbursed for the study,”
Keravuori said.
The study for the road on
the east side of Capital Boulevard from
South Main Street at the Chris Leith
Chevrolet and Dodge dealership to a dead
end just short of the CSX railroad is
being done because of the flurry of
development activity there. It will also
look at the extended median the state
Department of Transportation, which owns
and maintains the roads, installed on
South Main Street (U.S. 1-A) when it
reconfigured its intersection at
Capital. The median prevents left turns
on and from South Main.
Several of the property
owners are considering development.
Those include Daryl Cady and Gordon
Monroe. Dan Caster, the owner of A-1
Storage, may have an option on the
Starlite Motel and Pawn Shop property or
may have already purchased it. The city
of Raleigh may decide to sell the front
portion of its property, the former
Chris Leith dealership site. The city
operates the Wake Forest and Rolesville
water and sewer systems from buildings
at the rear of the site.
Allen Massey and Jeff Looper
have an approved master plan for a
five-lot commercial subdivision
immediately to the south of Living Word
Family Church, and a doctor plans a
commercial subdivision at the end of the
road on Cliff Lane.
“Everything can’t just dump
out onto Capital Boulevard,” Keravuori
said. Kimley-Horn is looking at some
cross-overs in the highway median. There
are two cross-over points to access Star
Road to the east and Ponderosa Drive to
the west between the South Main
intersection and the CSX railroad
bridge.
Another aspect of the study
is a possible link to Ligon Mill Road.
There is such a link with no firm
alignment on the town’s transportation
plan. The link would give fire trucks
from Station #2 on Ligon Mill Road much
easier access to Star Road, but the road
would have to avoid the historic
Hartsfield house and be west of the CSX
rail line.
* * * *
There will be construction
on South Main Street (U.S. 1-A) sometime
this year. At its February meeting, the
Wake Forest Town Board told the staff to
begin the design to widen the street to
three lanes from Forbes Road to
Forestville Road.
Deputy Town Manager Roe
O’Donnell said it will cost about $1.1
million because “very little
right-of-way acquisition” will be
necessary. The money will come from the
$9.5 million bond issue approved in the
spring of 2005. At that time, $1 million
was earmarked to widen South Main from
Rogers Road to Forbes Road, but last
fall residents overwhelmingly
disapproved the town’s plan for four
travel lanes divided by a 4-foot
concrete median that would have
prevented left turns.
When the short section of
South Main from Forbes to Forestville is
widened, and after two parallel
north-south roads are built, Ligon Mill
to the west and Franklin Street to the
east, South Main will have adequate
capacity for the next 10 or 15 years,
maybe 20.
But, O’Donnell said on Feb.
20, there will still be delays where the
street intersects with the N.C. 98
bypass. “That intersection is not going
to operate well ever. You’ll have to
accept more than two-cycle delays,”
O’Donnell warned.
The state Department of
Transportation decided against a grade
separation at that intersection because
it would have required a bridge on the
bypass over South Main. The reason was
cost, which was also the reason DOT did
not grade separate traffic on South
Main-New Falls of the Neuse from that on
Capital Boulevard. The Capital Area
Metropolitan Planning Organization
(CAMPO) will ask DOT for funds to build
the bridges at that intersection and at
the Durant Road-Perry Creek Road
intersection with Capital Boulevard.
* * * *
Within the next year, the
town and DOT will evaluate the impact of
the N.C. 98 bypass on local traffic and
make some changes. One would be to
revisit the idea of a large roundabout
around the campus with traffic flowing
counter-clockwise, allowing for right
turns only.
The analysis could also
affect truck traffic. The state is
supposedly contemplating marking a truck
route through town, and the residents
along North Main Street are adamant that
through truck traffic be banned from
their street.
The construction contract
for the third leg of the bypass –
Section A from Capital Boulevard to N.C.
98 near Thompson Mill Road – will not be
awarded until next year, 2008. The
project will include re-aligning Falls
of the Neuse Road to connect with
Thompson Mill Road.
* * * *
In the future, there will be
at least 12 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 four 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 certain
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. |
