At a public information meeting Monday, NCDOT and the city of Raleigh will air their refined plans for overhauling the obsolete interchanges that carry Capital Boulevard over Peace Street and under Wade Avenue in downtown Raleigh. (See story in Saturday's N&O with reader comments.)

NCDOT has information on a dedicated website for its Capital Boulevard bridges project, but the site has not been updated to include the six design options that will be submitted for public comment at Monday's meeting (5-7 p.m.,  Progress Energy Center, Fletcher Opera Hall lobby, 2 E. South Street).

For the latest on the current options, see the most recent project newsletter and a handout prepared for Monday's meeting, both attached below to this blog post.

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View NC 86 bridge over I-85 @ Hillsborough in a larger map

Repair work will close the N.C. 86 bridge over I-85 (Exit 165) at night for a week or more, starting Tuesday, Oct. 2, the state Department of Transportation said.

The bridge will be closed between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. each night for milling, paving and bridge deck slab repairs.  The work is expected to take at least 7 to 10 nights.

Detours will be marked, directing northbound drivers on N.C. 86 to go north on I-85 to Exit 170 and return to Exit 185.  Southbound drivers on N.C. 86 will be detoured via Old N.C. 86 (Exit 164).

Smithfield residents, downtown businesses and Johnston County commuters aren’t sure how they will handle the scheduled closing for six to eight months of the busy U.S. 70 Business bridge over the Neuse River, starting Tuesday evening, Sept. 25. (See 9/23 Smithfield Herald story.)

The state Department of Transportation is replacing the five-lane bridge, built in 1923, at the west edge of downtown. Demolition will start this week as soon as the old bridge is closed.

The new structure will be expanded to include a pedestrian walkway on the north side and a combination bicycle-pedestrian path on the south side. D.H. Griffin Construction Co. of Raleigh won a $5.3 million contract to build the new bridge.

While the Neuse bridge is closed, the 25,000 cars and trucks that use it each day will be diverted to other routes. ... [MORE]

View Kelly Road in a larger map

A new bridge and interchange that lifts Kelly Road over U.S. 64 at Apex will open for traffic Sept. 26, the state Department of Transportation said.

It was built as part of the nearby Triangle Expressway toll road project. To prepare for the new bridge opening, DOT closed an existing section of Kelly Road north from U.S. 64 to Jenks Road, on Wednesday.  A detour is marked to reroute Kelly Road drivers on U.S. 64, Green Level Church Road and Jenks Road.

View Vandora Springs Rd & Buffaloe Rd roundabout in a larger map

The state Department of Transportation says it will close the intersection of Vandora Springs Road and Buffaloe Road in Garner for two months, starting Monday, Sept. 17, for construction of a roundabout.

Traffic will be detoured north of  the intersection via Old Stage Road, Woodland Drive and Timber Drive.  The new roundabout intersection is expected to reopen by Nov. 16.

Engineers at the state Department of Transportation have staggered the schedules for four Raleigh-area projects planned over the coming decade, so drivers won’t have to grapple with more than one traffic nightmare at a time. (See today's story with reader comments.)

The timetables are included in an updated statewide plan for transportation improvements through 2023, which was released Wednesday in draft form.  DOT will post it formally for public comment in October. Meanwhile you also can find it here, now (a 10mb pdf), on the state Board of Transportation website. 

It's an updated schedule for road and other projects DOT promises to build in the next five years and expects to build in the next 10 years.  Included are several major Triangle projects that are likely to cause long traffic jams during construction, with traffic improvements after they're finished. 

Click the link below for a PDF map locating 14 Triangle projects planned to start over the next 10 years. Among them are projects to widen I-40 in Orange, Wake and Johnston counties, and to widen the last four-lane section of the I-440 Beltline, and to build Durham's East End Connector.

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Maybe it wasn't head-strong bicyclists who started that little dust-up on Dairyland Road between the two-wheelers and a DOT paving contractor. Maybe, Orange County bike rider Ivan Bachelder says, it was the contractor's fault.

As the Road Worrier reported today (see column with reader comments), DOT is repaving the rural Orange County road, extremely popular with bike riders, and adding 24-inch paved shoulders on both sides. There were alarms when the paving contractor pilot truck found itself meeting cyclists head-on.

DOT and others said the cyclists had ignored a flagger's request to stop, and had decided to go.

But at least in some cases, Bachelder said by email, the pilot vehicle drove too fast and the cyclists fell behind. Then, when making a return trip, the pilot truck met the cyclists head-on: ... [MORE]

House transportation budget writers decided Thursday where to absorb an expected drop in gas tax collections next year, and they delivered the biggest spending cut to the state's program for paving gravel roads and improving paved secondary roads.

The House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee accepted a plea from Rep. Phil Shepard, a Jacksonville Republican, to ease the damage that a proposed budget would have caused for rural and urban transit programs.  The panel agreed to cut public transit grants by $2.6 million instead of the $8.6 million originally proposed, and it shifted the $6 million difference to the secondary road construction fund.

“Our transit system takes people to the doctor and dialysis and many places our senior citizens can’t get to, in the city (Jacksonville) and in the county (Onslow),” Shepard said in an interview. He said he saw less need for money to pave gravel roads.  (The House transportation money report and Shepard's amendment - which changes some numbers in the money report - are attached to this blog post.) ... [MORE]

View 540 Outer Loop in a larger map

Some commuters in western Wake County will face the choice of driving a free, four-mile detour during construction of a new bridge on Green Level Church Road -- or paying a toll for a shorter detour that will open about the same time.

The state Department of Transportation says it has awarded a $2.5 million contract to S.T. Wooten Corp. of Wilson to replace the 60-year-old Green Level Church Road bridge over White Oak Creek at the Cary-Apex town limits.

The contract gives Wooten the option to start work between Aug. 1 and March 1, 2013, with completion in 240 days. While the bridge is closed during construction, drivers will have a detour of four miles via Green Level West, Wimberly and Jenks roads. ... [MORE]

View I-85 Yadkin River Bridge in a larger map

The work has taken longer than expected, but construction on a long-sought replacement for the harrowing Interstate 85 bridge near Salisbury will mark a milestone this weekend when the current two-lane northbound traffic is moved from the narrow old bridge to a new four-lane bridge.

Gov. Bev Perdue traveled to the site of the half-mile-long I-85 Yadkin River bridges project Thursday to announce the traffic shift, set to take place early Saturday morning.  That's almost two months later than the state Department of Transportation had expected to make the change, according to DOT officials and a timeline posted at the project website.

DOT had predicted that both northbound and southbound drivers would be off the old bridge -- two lanes in each direction -- by May 21.  When that happens, now scheduled for July, northbound and southbound drivers will share the new four-lane northbound bridge temporarily.

The twin four-lane bridge for southbound traffic now is expected to open in early 2013, instead of early November as scheduled earlier.

The narrow bridge, built in 1955, carries 70,000 cars and trucks every day on the main interstate highway between Richmond and Atlanta. Its replacement will give travelers a faster and less frightening trip over the Yadkin River.  DOT is spending more than $200 million to replace the bridge and add new lanes to a nearby stretch of I-85.

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