Contractor to Start Putting Up Girders for New Peace Street Bridge in Raleigh

From the NCDOT

RALEIGH – It will be a busy week for the contractor for the Capital Boulevard bridges project in Raleigh on the Peace Street phase of the work.

Starting tonight, the contractor plans to begin installing girders for the new bridge that will carry Capital Boulevard traffic over Peace Street. It is tentatively scheduled to take three nights to set the girders, although it may not require all three nights to finish.

For safety reasons for both drivers and the workers, Peace Street will be closed from midnight to 5 a.m. on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and if needed, Friday night as well.

Drivers who are eastbound on Peace Street will be detoured with a right turn on North West Street, a left turn on West Jones Street and a left turn on North Wilmington Street to get back to Peace Street. Westbound drivers will turn left on West Salisbury, right on West Lane Street, right on North Harrington Street, left on West North Street and right on North West Street to make it back to Peace Street.

Once the girders are in place, there will be a traffic shift going into place on Peace Street itself, tentatively set for Thursday night, Feb. 8. This is also weather conditional and can be postponed until a later date if needed.

The shift will allow the contractor to work on phase two of the installation of a large culvert under Peace Street. The initial traffic shift for the culvert work was last September, and put traffic into a single lane in each direction, with a left-turn lane so drivers on westbound Peace Street can turn onto North West Street, and westbound Peace Street returning to a two-lane pattern between North West Street and Glenwood Avenue. In this next shift, traffic will move over to the section of road that has been closed, and then the lanes that vehicles have been using will be closed off to traffic

The one-lane each way traffic pattern was scheduled to be in place for 300 days, and since it started last fall, it should wrap up early this summer.

The bridge over Peace Street is 67 years old. Its replacement is part of a complete revamping of the interchange, with the current diamond-shaped interchange now in use replaced by a square loop interchange that eliminates the ramp directly to Peace Street that currently exists. Instead, drivers will travel over the new bridge, and then use Johnson Street and Harrington Street, which will be extended, to access Peace Street at a traffic light. There will also be bike lanes added along Peace Street between the interchange ramps, and sidewalks will be widened to 14 feet along Peace Street and most of the square loop.

It is part of a $36.9 million project that also puts a new bridge-ramp on Wade Avenue over Capital Boulevard. Work on that bridge, which is going in next to the current structure, is expected to see motorists moving over to the new structure later this spring or early summer

Updated information on the bridge projects are available through a variety of means, including the project website, as well as through the department’s Triangle Twitter feed.