03/28/2024
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Traffic shift slated for May 29

FAYETTEVILLE – The new Rowan Street bridge in downtown Fayetteville is scheduled to open to traffic for the first time on Tuesday, May 29 – six months ahead of schedule.

The permanent traffic shift is needed so workers can begin demolishing the current Rowan Street bridge that the new one alongside it will replace.

Initially, only four travel lanes (two in each direction) will be open on the new bridge. Once the current bridge is demolished, workers can finish construction on the final two travel lanes – for a total of three in each direction.

Favorable weather last year helped get the new bridge open half a year early, and so did an internally compressed subcontracting schedule by the contractor, S.T. Wooten Corporation of Wilson. The N.C. Department of Transportation awarded the $24.3 project in October 2016.

“Wooten has been using an innovative schedule to deliver this project quicker than anticipated,” said Jason Salisbury, the NCDOT resident engineer overseeing the work. “We also allowed some of the construction phases to be done simultaneously to further expedite the work.”

The existing four-lane bridge was built in 1956 and has become functionally obsolete for today’s traffic using it and requires expensive maintenance.

The new bridge is actually made up of two spans – one crosses the CSX railroad, and the other goes over the Norfolk Southern rail. Both rail lines are closer together where they go under the current bridge about to be razed.

The project also includes realigning Rowan Street, Murchison Road and Bragg Boulevard into a new intersection that will create a new gateway into downtown and a more prominent route to the Fayetteville State University campus nearby.

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