Two new interchanges slated for 2018
By Steve Herring
Published in News on March 30, 2015 1:46 PM
Interchanges at U.S. 117 and O'Berry Road at Dudley and U.S. 117 and Country Club Road at Mount Olive are currently on schedule to be built in the fall of 2018.
Other road projects that are closer to being done include widening sections of North Berkeley Boulevard, U.S. 117 (North William Street) and Wayne Memorial Drive.
The U.S. 117 interchanges are being viewed by members of the Wayne County Transportation Committee as the next step in what is hoped to eventually be the southern extension of Interstate 795 from Goldsboro all the way to Interstate 40 in Sampson County.
However, State Department of Transportation engineer Chris Pendergraph recently told the committee those dates could change "next week."
"But basically right now that is our best anticipation of these dates," he said.
"We are going to have to eat this elephant (I-795) one bite at a time," committee chairman and Wayne County Commissioner Joe Daughtery said. "So it is good to see that those two are actually on the list."
Daughtery said he would encourage the Rural Planning Organization and Metropolitan Planning Organization to look at the next two interchanges past the one at Country Club Road.
"We get the overpasses in place, and then once we do that then it is a matter of connecting the dots," he said. "It is going to have to be a long-range project where we are actually taking interchanges one at a time."
Pendergraph said that was similar to the new U.S. 70 Bypass between Interstate 40 and Morehead City.
That project is being done in "chunks" as well, he said.
Daughtery said he had heard a figure of $200 million that would be needed to upgrade U.S. 117 to Interstate standards.
"How in the world they came up with that huge amount of money?" he said. "But anyway we are not going to get that type of funding. So what we are going to have to do is to break it into smaller pieces."
The widening of North Berkeley Boulevard between Royall Avenue and New Hope Road is slated to be let to contract this summer, Pendergraph said.
The expansion will add an additional lane coming into the city.
The project on North William Street is designed to eliminate an "hour-glass" bottleneck section of road between Fedelon Trail and the new U.S. 70 Bypass interchange.
"It goes from three lanes down to two lanes, then it goes right back out to almost five lanes," Pendergraph said. "So we are going to take that bottleneck out and put a three-lane section through there.
"Currently we are getting right of way and utilities. Hopefully we'll be able to get that out to bid for construction sometime later this summer or early fall."
Daughtery said it is very important to have the widening done because of the water and sewer already available at the interchange.
There is actually a "bigger" widening project that has already been "scoped," but it is not in the state transportation improvement plan, Pendergraph said.
That project would take the section of William Street to a "true multi-lane road," he said.
"(The older plan) actually comes a little farther into Goldsboro, but actually, I think, goes all of the way to the Belfast area on the other side of the interchange," Pendergraph said. "So it actually improves both sides of the interchange."
He reminded the committee it is not in the state transportation plan, but that it could be developed as a separate project.
A feasibility study for that project was done in the early 1990s well before the bypass project, he said.
Daughtery said the county might want to keep that project in mind when the next round of scoping comes up in about a year and a half.
"We might want to reactivate that," he said.
Commissioner Ray Mayo said he thinks the MPO has in front of it the possibility of road to the Wayne Executive Jetport from U.S. 70 instead of people having to meander through Belfast to get to and from the airport.
"What I am saying is that we might want to look at that altogether," Mayo said. "People fly into Goldsboro/Wayne and they have to have a GPS to get to Goldsboro. I am serious. It is a problem getting there.
"It has been talked about for years, and I just wanted to see where we were."
Mount Olive Town Manager Charles Brown said that problem could be solved by having the planes fly into the Mount Olive airport where it is easier for people to find their way around.
Next on the list, Pendergraph said, is Wayne Memorial Drive starting at the U.S. 70 Bypass interchange north to the traffic signal at Saulston.
The project would not make the road multi-lane. Instead the shoulders would be paved because of the large number of reported cases of run-off-the-road crashes along that section of road, he said.
That project is expected to be under way by mid-summer 2016, he said.
Commissioner Bill Pate said it is also going to be important to improve Wayne Memorial Drive from the interchange to Wayne Community College because of plans to build a new agriculture/convention center there.