August 15, 2007

Published in Wake Forest, NC

            Heritage Lake Road now almost meets the N.C. 98 bypass. Just recently it has received its first coat of asphalt, but that ends maybe 500 feet short of the bypass. This week Heritage developer Andy Ammons said there is no date yet to connect the two, “but it should be this year.” People on the east side of town are anxious for the connection as it will give them easy access to the interior of Heritage, stores such as Harris-Teeter and the two Heritage schools.

            “It will be full movement with turn lanes and signals,” Ammons said. As discussed during the public hearing for Gateway Commons Shopping Center, planned for the southwest corner of the bypass/Jones Dairy Road intersection, Heritage Lake Road will also give access to those stores and businesses.

            That leads to the second road from Heritage accessing Gateway Commons – Friendship Chapel Road. “We have completed our responsibilities for Friendship Chapel,” Ammons said. “The connection to Jones Dairy will be made when the commercial projects on Jones Dairy do their improvements. They wanted us to stop 10 feet short.”

* * * *

            After a lot of complaints, the state Department of Transportation’s Wake County maintenance office sent out a crew to paint the center line and road edges on North White Street. The road has been patched and crews have laid down BST – bituminous surface treatment – in anticipation of total resurfacing later this summer or early fall.

            County Maintenance Engineer Jason Holmes said the BST needs to sit and cure to prevent later crumbling.

            There is no contract for the work. “This is work DOT does itself,” Holmes said.

* * * *

            Drivers on South Main Street (U.S. 1-A) will have a break this summer; there will be no construction. However, drivers on South Franklin Street need to be aware there will be disruption later this year (see below).

            The town is collecting survey data for the widening of South Main between Forbes and Forestville roads to three lanes – two travel lanes and a turn lane. In May the commissioners approved a contract with Kimley-Horn Associates for $196,774 for the engineering and design.

            Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell has said the project will cost between $1.1 and $1.3 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.

            Construction is planned for next spring.

* * * *  

            Wake Forest Director of Engineering Eric Keravuori said recently his office is still reviewing the draft traffic study for Star Road, a study that has gained new complexity because the owners of the quarry on the west side of Capital Boulevard, Benchmark Carolina Aggregates (formerly Nello Teer), want input.

            The quarry, which plans to double in size in the future, has 350 trucks entering and leaving each day, Keravuori said.

            Along with all the developments underway, planned or possible along deadend Star Road, the town must also take into account the plans to make Capital Boulevard a limited-access freeway and the Wake Forest transportation plan, which calls for a new road linking Star Road with Ligon Mill Road. Star Road runs from South Main Street and ends near where the CSX rail line goes under Capital Boulevard.

            Dan Caster, who owns A-1 Storage on Star Road, has purchased the former Starlite Motel and Pawn Shop acting as Wake Forest Gateway Center. He has a sign up offering to build to suit, and a restaurant is reportedly interested.

            Daryl Cady of Cady Construction has purchased land immediately to the north of Living Word Family Church from Allen Massey and Jeff Looper and is grading for the five-lot commercial subdivision.

            That subdivision may become part of the larger LaScala Uptown, a mix of retail space and offices, that Cady is planning.

            One reason the town contracted for the study with Kimley-Horn Associates, the costs of which will be charged back to developers, is the limited access to the road. A median in South Main Street restricts movement to only right in, right out. There are two crossover access points to the road from Capital.

            “Everything can’t just dump out onto Capital Boulevard,” Keravuori said. 

            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.

* * * *

            Now that the Wake Forest commissioners have approved the Alexan at Ligon Mill, a 288-unit apartment complex just north of Wal-Mart and east of The Shoppes at Caveness Farm, the town is pretty much assured Ligon Mill Road will be extended from South Main Street to the N.C. 98 bypass within the foreseeable future.

            The Alexan developers, Trammell Crow Residential, will remove the sewer pump station in the road’s right-of-way, build two of the four future road lanes and grade for the remaining two travel lanes and median. Their section of the road will go from the current end near Wal-Mart to Caveness Farm Avenue.

            Also Parker & Orleans of Cary, the firm building Reynolds Mill subdivision on Forbes Road, must build the eastern two lanes of the road up to the bypass before the seventy-fifth building permit is issued.

            The third leg of the assurance is that the master plan for The Shoppes at Caveness Farm included a requirement to complete Ligon Mill to the bypass. Weingarten Realty Investors which is developing The Shoppes with Bob Hughes Associates has announced Steinmart will be one of the stores at the center.

            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 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 in 2007 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 has said 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 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.

* * * *

            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 will be signals where Heritage Lake Road meets the bypass in a full movement intersection, 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.