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 on
Murchison Road.