U.S. Census Bureau numbers out this spring only confirmed what every general contractor in the Southeast region knew: There is plenty of highway construction opportunity in Raleigh, NC.
The state capital and the county surrounding it comprise one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country. The area threatens soon to become one big traffic jam, extending from horizon to horizon, unless highway contractors fix it by opening new stretches of pavement. Contractors are certainly willing to try.
The situation is perfectly illustrated by the NC Department of Transportation’s (NCDOT) massive project to build the city’s second loop road. Four contractors are working on selected sections of just one 34-mi. (54 km) leg of the outer loop, a segment dubbed the Northern Wake (County) Expressway. Signs designate the roadway as “Future 540,” but the numerical naming cannot occur until both ends of the freeway touch federal highways years from now.
A generation ago, building this oblong belt around Raleigh would have been so much easier. But in the last 20 years, the city has mushroomed, particularly on its northern side.
New subdivisions and self-contained communities — many containing elaborate multi-level homes — have sprouted and spread and now cover what formerly was countryside containing a few modest rural houses. Streets serving this new suburban population have been built or have been widened and widened again. All of those streets roughly run north and south. The expressway runs east and west.
This is the problem: The six-lane expressway necessarily contains numerous bridges and interchanges to connect it with all those intersecting streets, or to allow it to ride over or under the streets.
In just one 1.75-mi. (2.8-km) section, Blythe Construction Inc. is building 11 bridge structures and two culverts. The price tag for this freeway section is $48.2 million.
In June, less than a year from the contract’s completion date, Blythe had many of the structures in place, though not completed. Massive earthen ramps and fills linking them were formed. The hurdles to completion mostly had been cleared and final shaping had begun.
From March to November of last year was the busiest time, with Blythe working 160 crew members “day and night,” recalled Project Manager Scott Clements.
Besides building the structures, the contractor was moving massive amounts of dirt — in excess of 3.9 million cu. yds. (3 million cu m). This included 845,000 cu. yds. (650,000 cu m) of on-site excavation, more than half of it rock, Clements said.
Borrow pit hauling ranged from as near as the edge of right-of-way to as far away as 10 mi. (16 km). “We had to be pretty creative,” Clements noted.
A company fleet of 20 Mack tractors pulling Red River bottom dump trailers rumbled through the North Carolina night to deliver the fill from off site.
Nighttime was deemed the most productive period to haul from borrow pits. Not only was there less traffic for truck drivers to contend with at those hours, but, conversely, fewer trucks were on the streets during the day for Raleigh commuters to encounter.
“We had to think about how it was impacting the community,” said NCDOT Resident Engineer Mark Craig, of the off-site hauling. “These trucks were going through neighborhoods, and we try to be sensitive to that.” He added that the commuter traffic was “difficult to deal with at times.” The DOT relied heavily on media announcements to keep commuters abreast of potential delays and detours. “It’s been a challenge,” agreed Tracy Parrot, DOT District 5 construction engineer. He noted that although right-of-way for the freeway had been secured for years, some housing areas were developed directly against it.
So, when construction finally ensued in 1992, neighbors woke up to the reality of the project and some objected to the noise of it. “It was a delicate situation,” he said.
DOT and Raleigh officials did what they could to mitigate the “disaster” of a six-lane freeway cutting through mostly new neighborhoods. In one case on another section of the project, a permanent pedestrian bridge was approved to offset the loss of Colesbury Road.
Blythe is building that narrow, 164-yd. (150 m) long structure. The company’s Structures Division won the subcontract for the job from Raleigh contractor C.C. Mangum. Residents will walk and bike across a bridge that rests on poured-in-place concrete piers and is carried by pre-cast concrete girders.
Readi-Mix Concrete Inc. of Raleigh-Durham and contractor S.T. Wooten, Wilson, NC, are supplying concrete for Blythe. Dan Goodall is Blythe’s project manager for the numerous structures. The most impressive one Goodall has erected is a “flyover” exit ramp that wings north at the freeway’s intersection with U.S. 1 highway. It takes off at the east end of a 91-yd. (83 m) long bridge across U.S. 1 and curves northward above the freeway for about 364 yds. (338 m) before delivering exiting traffic onto northbound highway lanes.
The steel-girdered framework of the flyover rests on huge concrete T-piers. All girders on the loop project are steel, with the exception of the pedestrian structure, and were supplied by Carolina Steel.
Less noticeable to commuters on the finished freeway will be triple-barreled and double-barreled culverts running beneath it. That’s because crews cut through the bottom of earthen fills that are 60 to 70-ft. (18 to 21 m) high with broad slopes at the bottom. “The top and bottom slabs on those culverts are as much as 4 and 5 ft. thick,” noted Clements, his point being that even the lesser structures of the 13 on the job are significant ones.
That Blythe is not wedded to one equipment manufacturer is readily evident.
For instance, girder work on the flyover employed a 100-ton (90-t) American crane. On the small pedestrian bridge, a small Link-Belt crane was assisting a crew forming a concrete embankment wall. A Link-Belt KSP 8040 unit was lifting steel farther west where Blythe is finishing twin bridges across CSX Railroad tracks, structures that are 260 ft. (79 m) long and 60 ft. (18 m) wide.
Earth-moving crews on the approach to the railroad bridges employed a Komatsu PC300. It chewed away at a dirt bank to fill a pair of Volvo A25 off-road trucks. A Caterpillar 140A grader shaped the roadbed, which was being firmed down by a Cat 815F steel compactor. Ingersoll-Rand units tamped the earth elsewhere.
Clements said that his company, like so many, is looking first for value in equipment, rather than feeling particular allegiance to one manufacturer or another.
After all the dirt is shaped and packed, Blythe’s Asphalt Division will lay three courses of pavement, a total paved thickness of 10 in. (25 cm).
Blythe Construction is a Charlotte, NC, firm affiliated with the Hubbard Group. Much of its contract work is with the North Carolina and South Carolina DOT offices and the city of Charlotte.
Clements has been with the company for two years, most of that time on the Wake County expressway.
The project manager and Blythe hope to be working on the loop for years to come, with the adjacent legs of the loop to be let in the next few months.
Blythe is running slightly ahead of schedule on its current contracts. Parrot, the district engineer, said staying on schedule has been the rule for all the contractors. “Everything generally is running within six months of anticipated completion dates,” he said.
Clements also is overseeing some smaller Blythe projects in Raleigh. These include, ironically, widening some of those same roads that run north from the center of Raleigh and intersect with the freeway being built over and under them. CEG
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