John Wood, left, and Roger Caulder drill a whole in the empty lot across the road and down some from Ruby Tuesday Wednesday, Sept. 2. According to officials on site, Wood and Caulder were obtaining soil samples for a potential widening of N.C. 24.
One of those projects, the resurfacing of Sunset Avenue in Clinton, is now under way and is scheduled to extend until the middle of November. The other project, the resurfacing of approximately 21 miles of Interstate 40 in both Sampson and Duplin counties, is expected to be completed by November 2010.
Barnhill Contracting Co. was awarded both contracts and has crews currently working along the main thoroughfare that cuts through Clinton. While the I-40 resurfacing is a $12.7 million contract, the resurfacing of Sunset Avenue, minimal by comparison, was awarded to Barnhill in the amount of $852,912.
Lloyd Royall, division proposals engineer for the N.C. Department of Transportation’s Division 3, said previously that the Sunset Avenue contract was approved by the DOT at its May meeting, with work scheduled to begin as early as the next month.
As part of the project, Barnhill Construction Co. will be resurfacing a 1.4-mile stretch of Sunset (N.C. 24), specifically from west of Airport Road to U.S. Highway 421. Work is scheduled to be completed no later than Nov. 20 and will take place between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.
The work will include lowering utility manholes, removing the top three inches of asphalt, resurfacing and limited curb and gutter repair. N.C. DOT officials said they hope to have the project completed before the Nov. 20 deadline.
In July, Royall pointed to the N.C. 24 resurfacing’s status as a Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) project, and noted that its designated TIP number corresponded with one given the long-proposed N.C. 24 widening project. He said the resurfacing along Sunset is an initial step toward that.
“It’s time consuming,” he said of the widening endeavor at the time, “but it is coming.”
TIP projects are those funded over long periods of time, planned and financed over several years. The N.C. 24 widening would definitely fall into that category.
The $370 million project calls for a four-lane roadway all the way from Cumberland County to I-40 near Warsaw, with a median-divided roadway and interchanges at major crossroads. Smaller municipalities such as Roseboro and Autryville will be bypassed as the project proceeds from the west; Clinton will not.
Such a bypass has been proposed by a vociferous contingent locally, but DOT officials have stressed that will not be included in the current N.C. 24 project.
Chris Berendt can be reached at 910-592-8137, ext. 121, or by email at sicrime@myclintonnc.com.
God bless. I'll pray for you.