By Suze Parker, contributing author
When Phase 1 of the Triangle Expressway expansion was opened in September, the residents of Raleigh, NC and their surrounding communities entered a new era of regional connectivity.
The expansion has been as part of the full project 540 for decades, an external loop around the booming subway that improve mobility, reduce congestion and promote economic growth.
The 18-mile project runs between the North Carolina Highway 55-bypass and the Interstate 40 exchange near the Wake/Johnston County line with three lanes in every direction. With 1.3 billion US dollars, it is the largest investment in the motorway infrastructure in the history of the Ministry of Transport (NCDOT) in North Carolina.
“The Triangle Expressway supports the growth of the region and offers an efficient transport option,” said JJ Eden, Managing Director of North Carolina Turnpike Authority. “Before phase 1 was completed, the trip to Nord -raleigh from the southern part of the region was at best stressful. The Triangle Expressway extension gives drivers an alternative to driving I-40 through the city center of Raleigh, one of the most overloaded streets in the state. “
Support for a toll road
The concept of Triangle Expressway Toll Road began in 2005 when Mayor from five of the rapidly growing upstairs in the Raleigh region, the North Carolina Turnpike Authority (NCTA), an agency within NCDOT, changed to apply for a takeover of the project.
“It was unusual 20 years ago that these chosen officers campaigned for a toll road,” said Jennifer Harris, manager of the HNTB program. “At that time there were no toll roads in the state. The mayors recognized the need for a transport infrastructure that would allow their communities to grow as planned, and knew that there was no financing for the project. It was a toll road or not a street. “
With the support of HNTB as a general engineering consultant, the NCTA evaluated the project and found that the construction of the street with toll could significantly accelerate the timeline.
Reduction of public effects
An extensive effort was required before the soil was interrupted in 2019 for the first phase of the Triangle Expressway extension.
The entire expansion – phases 1 and 2 – comprises 28 miles from Greenfield Roadway, which requires a complex environmental review process in a huge examination area. The NCTA had to consider several project alternatives in order to comply with the law on national environmental policy and to avoid and minimize the effects on human and natural environment.
In order to include the public in the discussion of the project and the potential alternatives, the NCTA carried out a robust outreach program that included meetings in communities. In addition, a dedicated project -E email address and a telephone hotline were created, in which the residents of areas can make comments or ask questions and receive answers.
The project team built Miles of Noise walls to alleviate the sound effects of the corridor on nearby properties. And for a neighborhood that was halved by the Triangle Expressway, Ncta built a passage that reaches the members of the community back and forth under the street.
NCDOT also agreed to provide 30% funds for the Open Space program in Wake County, where most of the Triangle Expressway extension is located. The contribution of the agency of $ 20 million has contributed to the purchase and maintenance of high-quality properties as constant parks, greenways and other open spaces.
“The NCTA was deliberately in cooperation with the municipalities and coordination with the local governments in order to clear up and determine concerns how alternatives coincided with local land use plans,” said Harris. “The agency was a good neighbor in all aspects of the project.”
Partnership with disadvantaged companies
Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBES) completed around 75 million US dollars of the Triangle Expressway extension work. In order to meet the DBEs to the project needs, NCTA organized an industry forum in connection with the NCDOT office for civil rights to inform DBEs about the project.
The project managers also met with small companies that were not already registered as DBEs to lead them through the process to be pre -qualified to work on the project. Interested representatives of the DBE company could speak directly to potential prime covers in a pre-biotiler.
In order to achieve efficiency and inclusion, the NCTA divided the phase -1 work into three projects, each of which was supported by their own contract. It staggered to reflect the standby of the sections for advertising.
This approach made it possible to strive for every project. It continued to make it possible for companies to make sound decisions about whether they should work in every section because they knew the result of an offer before the next offer.
The NCTA has also included companies in women and minorities in the application of the law. As a rule, different companies process different parts of the process. However, the NCTA brought together numerous related activities within one contract.
For two of the three contracts, the NCTA arrival and advertised that DBES should give the opportunity to lead in these contracts.
Machine challenges
Building through Covid created work and supply chain challenges that NCTA stood with a teamwork.
“At some point, heavy equipment worth around 15 million US dollars were for months because the operators were not available,” said Eden. “There was a time when we couldn't get steel. At some point we brought cement from abroad, and then this country went on strike and turned the ships. The engineering staff and contractors would analyze the problems and not give up. Cooperation we crossed Silos and found innovative solutions to get ahead. “
The strict synchronization in the three project segments confirmed the commitment of the NCTA to open all 18 miles at the same time. Claims turned from one material to another or found alternative sources than the accessibility of the supply chain had shifted.
“The NCTA understood the sensitivity of our time plan and ready to entertain everything the project team suggested,” said Alan Shapiro, deputy NCTA chief engineer. “It was a total team effort to ensure that the project never stopped.”
This spirit of cooperation made it possible to cope with an emergency in the eleventh hour. Fifty-fifty days before the Triangle Expressway opened-and the day after validating the toll system, the system at a toll point as one of the most busy corridors in the corridors-one truck hit the Tolling-Steg.
Usually the production of a replacement sport would have taken at least six months. The installation and testing of civil and technology could then take another three months.
However, within 23 days, a provider had built and installed a temporary alternative solution.
Shapiro described the result “a really incredible performance, the coordination and cooperation between the Turnpike authority, the seller and the construction company, who also tried to prepare the rest of the projects to open traffic.”
The innovative work of the NCTA Finance team also contributed to the project success.
“You could not have assumed that the fuel costs would like to please COVID so much, but you had the foresight to include fuel protection at the beginning of the project,” said Shapiro. “This fuel box saved us millions of dollars if the fuel costs were shot.”
Aesthetics that reduce the maintenance costs
NCTA has developed and applied an aesthetic design guidelines in the request of phase 1 for suggestions to ensure that the triangle -Expressway expansion is as nice as easy to drive.
The completed project, for example, contains more than 3.5 million hand-charged bricks on the noise and bridge walls of the Expressway, which imitates the original triangular fast road, on which most noise and bridge walls are painted to look like bricks.
The phases 1 and 2 of the Triangle Expressway Extension include more than a million square foot with brick cladding that are less maintained because they do not have to be rejected. NCTA also learned from her contractual partners that the provision of real brick was cheaper than the provision and painting of the panels.
“So we have observed construction and future maintenance costs and achieved a more pleasant product,” said Shapiro.
The NCTA installed devices for the toll gantries to identify and classify vehicles for proper toll instead of embedding intelligent detector loops into the sidewalk. This decision reduces future costs by removing the need to continuously reduce the sidewalk and change the loops according to rehabilitation activities of civil engineers.
Express expectations
In the first 60 days since the opening of the phase -1 extension, the use of the vehicle car had exceeded expectations. There were more than 5 million toll transactions. The most difficult day of travel during this time comprised 147,000 transactions.
Semis and other large trucks made up 6% of all transactions, twice as high as the expected amount. These numbers show that the Triangle Expressway helps to reduce the traffic jam to I-40 and the local network by pulling truck traffic from these roads.
Consistent comments from residents of the region to the beauty and the effective design of the street confirm the recognition of the beautification efforts of the NCTA, which include flower beds, vegetable trees and the placement of a Hundwood emblem, the Triangle Expressway icon, on all character columns and bridges along the corridor.
Phase 2 of the Expressway expansion, a 10-mile route between I-40 and Interstate-87, which will complete the 540 outer loop, began in June and should be opened in 2028. RB
Suze Parker is a PR consultant who often writes about streets, bridges and other infrastructure projects.