Construction to widen Randall Parkway to four lanes between Independence Boulevard and South College Road is scheduled to begin at the start of the year, but preparatory work will start next week, according to the City of Wilmington.
Traffic signs posted along the currently two-lane roadway—divided by a median west of Kerr Avenue; a middle turn lane between Kerr and College—indicate work will begin Wednesday, Jan. 2. A notice released Friday, however, states the first phase of the project—removal of vegetation to make room for the widening—will begin next week, with intermittent traffic delays to be expected.
Clearing is expected to take up to four weeks to complete, according to the notice, with roadwork beginning in early January at the Independence intersection.
The $5.6-million project, which Wilmington City Council approved in October, was previously scheduled to start in November, according to information on the city’s website.
Construction is slated to last 15 months, with more than half of the project’s construction budget coming from state and federal funding and a 2006 voter-approved transportation bond.
Plans include a divided highway the length of the parkway from College to Independence, with bicycle lanes, landscaped medians and a 10-foot-wide multi-use path between Independence and Kerr that would add to the Gary Shell Cross-City Trail, connecting parts of the trail already in place off Independence and across College at UNCW.
Sidewalks will also be installed where possible, and pedestrian crossings will be installed at the intersection of Randall and Kerr.
Part of the goal of the project is to alleviate traffic congestion, particularly between Kerr and College, where backups due to school bus stops and general high traffic volumes are common.
In time, the project will also play into a planned widening of Kerr, between Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway to the north and Patrick Avenue, just south of Randall.
The N.C. Department of Transportation is planning to widen Kerr to four lanes with a landscaped median, along with sidewalks and bicycle lanes to be funded by the City of Wilmington.
The first phase of the project, which would be done in two phases, is scheduled to start in 2014, with a projected cost of $41 million. That includes acquisition of additional right-of-way in the largely built-out corridor.
Covil Avenue—the two-lane road that connects Independence with Market Street—is also planned to be widened. That project—referred to as the Independence Boulevard Extension; extending Independence from its intersection with Randall to connect with the MLK Jr. Parkway—is projected to cost $56 million, and is currently unfunded.
A map of the roads involved is below.
Jonathan Spiers can be reached at (910) 772-6313 or [email protected].
