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Road Roundup
Update: The total
cost for the N.C. 98 bypass will be $85 million, the state Department of
Transportation says, if the construction cost for the third and final section
is not more than the current estimate of $17,150,000.
The bid for that final section will be
let Thursday, Jan. 15.
The first section built, from Jones
Dairy Road to South Main Street (U.S. 1-A) cost $18.8 million, of which
$6,239,895 was to purchase the right-of-way and $12,522,666 was for the
construction. That section opened to traffic on Dec. 31, 2004.
The second section, from South Main
Street to Capital Boulevard, opened on June 15, 2006, and cost $38.8 million.
That cost breaks down to $14,537,755 for right-of-way acquisition and
$24,306,618 for construction.
The right-of-way for the third
section, from Capital Boulevard to Thompson Mill Road, has been purchased and
cost $8,702,857.
There is also a wetland mitigation
cost of $1,512,961 for the project as a whole.
After the bids are opened on Jan. 15
and the apparent low bidder is known, it will be at least six to eight weeks
before construction can begin.
This final section
of the bypass will be built from Retail Drive to Thompson Mill Road to meet
N.C. 98. If you want to see the future road configuration in the area, there is
a large-scale map at the Wake Forest Planning Department building on Brooks
Street, and DOT plans to put a map of the road alignments on the internet in
the near future.
* * * *
Update: Kimley-Horn Associates, the engineering firm the
town contracted with for a study of Star Road, has completed its work.
(The study cost will be billed back to future developers.)
“It
basically said that without signals any future development is limited. The
Town, DOT, CAMPO, etc., are opposed to any traditional signals on Capital
Blvd.,” Director of Engineering Eric Keravuori wrote in an e-mail response to a
question from the Gazette. “Daryl Cady has hired Krista Green to develop some
creative solutions to help with the problem. Stay tuned.”
Star
Road is a dead-end road parallel to Capital Boulevard and probably was the site
for the original north-south road in the area. On the north, a concrete median
in South Main Street prevents left turns in and out of the road; on the south,
it ends just short of the Capital Boulevard bridge over the CSX rail line.
Businesses
along the road include Chris Leith’s Dodge-Chevrolet dealership, Luck Stone,
AUTP and A-1 Personal Storage. Dan Caster, who owns the storage business, has
purchased the former Starlite Motel and Pawn Shop. He is offering to build to
suit.
Cady,
who has town approval for the first phase of his La Scala project – a hotel,
office building and ballroom/convention center just north of Living Word Family
Church – wants a full intersection with signals at the present unsignalized
cross-over from Capital that accesses Star Road.
Cady
plans four phases for La Scala that include 239,200 square feet of office
space, 375,250 square feet of retail space and another hotel on 85.5 acres.
Planners
would like another connection to South Main Street from the southern end of
Star Road, and the town’s transportation plan calls for a link between Star
Road and Ligon Mill Road.
Another
consideration about traffic in the area is the quarry on the west side of
Capital Boulevard. Benchmark Carolina Aggregates plan to double in size in the
near future. There are already 350 trucks entering and leaving each day.
* * * *
Chalk Road will be re-aligned to
meet Jones Dairy Road at Green Mountain Drive, the entrance to the Bowling
Green subdivision. In October, the Wake Forest commissioners approved a
contract with Wetherill Engineering of Raleigh for $141,212.15 for the
preliminary design and surveying. Construction will be scheduled at the same
time the state Department of Transportation replaces the bridges on Jones Dairy
over Smith Creek and Austin Creek, which will begin in late 2009 or early 2010.
* * * *
Think there are traffic signals that
should be improved? Call Steve Johnson, the Division 5 traffic engineer, at
220-4600, the new number for the Division 5 Durham office.
* * * *
Heritage
Lake Road
now almost meets the N.C. 98 bypass but paving ends about 500 feet short of the
highway. The extension of the road was built as part of Heritage North.
Heritage developer Andy Ammons had said he hoped to make the connection in
2007. When it is built, the T-intersection will provide full traffic movement
with turn lanes and signals.
Heritage Lake Road will be one of the
streets serving Gateway Commons Shopping Center in the southwest corner of the
bypass and Jones Dairy Road.
The second new road to the shopping
center is Friendship Chapel Road, which intersects with Heritage Lake
Road south of the bypass. It has been completed nearly to but not connected to
Jones Dairy Road. “The connection to Jones Dairy will be made when the
commercial projects on Jones Dairy do their improvements. They wanted us to stop
ten feet short,” Ammons said.
Until there is development on the
Dameron tract, part of the former Holding dairy farm, Friendship Chapel Road
will be in two sections. One on the west connects to South Main Street and now dead-ends
into the old dairy farm. The planned traditional neighborhood development
Holding Village will extend the street east to the edge of the Dameron tract.
On the east, the road runs through Heritage North to Jones Dairy.
* * * *
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 dead-end 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.
Developer Daryl Cady of Cady
Construction has an approved master plan for the first phase of LaScala Uptown,
and on Nov. 20 the town commissioners approved a special exception for the
hotel to be taller, about 60 feet, than the town standard of 35 feet except in
the downtown Renaissance area. There will also be an office building and a
ballroom/conference center on the 6.71 acres on Star Road north of Living Word
Family Church. Cady is also planning further phases of the commercial subdivision.
One reason the town contracted for the
traffic 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 a
bit shaky since Weingarten Realty Investors is reportedly seeking to sell The
Shoppes at Caveness Farm shopping center despite having named Steinmart as one
of the tenants.
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.
* * * *
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.
* * * *
DOT is supposed to mark a truck route through
town at some point, and the residents along North Main Street are
adamant that through truck traffic be banned from their street.
* * * *
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 Galaxy Drive, Capital Boulevard and Retail Drive.
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 South Franklin Street is
extended into Holding Village and 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.
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