July 11, 2007

Published in Wake Forest, NC

            Readers have asked about those as well as state of the sidewalk around CVS and the future sidewalk along North White.

            Andy Berry, an assistant resident engineer for the Wake County office of DOT Division 5, said S.T. Wooten has $5-million contract for 12 paving projects across the county this summer, one of the Wait Avenue job. The work includes patching and filling holes and milling out other sections from North White at the underpass east to the intersection with Jones Dairy Road and the new bypass.

            Berry said the next step will be to raise the utility covers to the new pavement height. The Wooten crews are expected to begin putting down new asphalt next Wednesday, July 18, and finish up on Friday. They will have to return to paint the striping and do some shoulder work but drivers will have a new surface and the major work will be done by the end of next week.

            The work on North White Street and Wall Road are DOT maintenance projects. “This is work DOT does itself,” county maintenance engineer Jason Holmes said.

            What you see on the two roads is BST, bituminous surface treatment, patch work in preparation for resurfacing later this year.

            “We’ve received a whole lot of calls about that,” Holmes said, mostly about the patching that covered the center lines. Holmes said he has called the paint crew to repaint the center lines and maybe even the edge lines as soon as possible because the roads will remain patched but not resurfaced for a while.

            There are two reasons for the delay. The first is that BST needs to cure or there will be some crumbling and other issues with the asphalt laid over it. Also, Holmes said there is just BST patching unit in Division 5 which had to move on to another county before it completed patching North White.

            It will be late summer or early fall before the patching unit is back and before the two roads will receive a total asphalt resurfacing.

            Sections of the sidewalk around CVS on Roosevelt and North White have been torn up and left as gravel. Wake Forest’s Director of Engineering Eric Keravuori said the town’s electric department, Wake Forest Power, is doing that to install the underground wires for the new Renaissance Plan-style street lights. Once all the wiring is in place, the sidewalk sections will be rebuilt and the street lights will be placed.

            As for the North White Street sidewalk from Juniper to north of Flaherty Park, the project is still planned but the engineering has not been done. The big project this summer is the work on South Franklin Street to build two roundabouts and a median, and the town is preparing to widen South Main Street between Forbes and Forestville roads next year.