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It wasn’t supposed to be finished until sometime next year, but the rebuilding of a congested stretch of Louisburg Road in northern Wake County is done.
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Dry weather combined with incentives from the N.C. Department of Transportation resulted in contractors recently completing a section of Louisburg Road where it meets Perry Creek, Mitchell Mill and Ligon Mill roads.
The goal was to improve safety and the flow of cars by reducing left turns and how long through traffic on Louisburg Road is stopped at red lights. Louisburg, which is also U.S. 401, has gotten busier as the Rolesville area has grown; nearly 60,000 cars and trucks a day pass through this stretch of U.S. 401, and NCDOT expects that number to top 93,000 a day by 2040.
The biggest change came where Mitchell Mill and Ligon Mill roads used to meet at Louisburg Road just north of the Neuse River. NCDOT engineers decided the best way to sort traffic out there was to turn a single intersection into two by moving Ligon Mill Road about 1,500 feet north of Mitchell Mill.
Meanwhile, southbound 401 traffic turning left onto Mitchell Mill now crosses over northbound traffic at a separate light several hundred feet north of the intersection, then proceeds to Mitchell Mill to make the left turn. This kind of turn is what traffic engineers call a continuous flow intersection, and this is only the second one in North Carolina.
A mile south of Mitchell Mill, drivers on Perry Creek Road now have one option when they reach U.S. 401 from both directions: Turn right. Those wishing to turn left onto U.S. 401 or remain on Perry Creek will also turn right but then get into the left lane and make U-turns at separate traffic signals down the road.
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Traffic engineers call this a reduced conflict intersection, because it cuts down on the number of places cars could potentially run into each other. Drivers from Perry Creek may find it takes longer to get through the intersection, while through traffic on U.S. 401 will come to a stop less often.
In addition to those changes, NCDOT widened the U.S. 401 bridges over the Neuse River to add an additional lane in both directions.
Construction began in the fall of 2023 and was supposed to continue until sometime in 2027. The contractor, Conti Civil LLC of Edison, New Jersey, got some help from the months-long drought that reduced the number of days lost to rain, said NCDOT spokeswoman Kim Deaner.
And NCDOT offered Conti a bonus if it could finish ahead of schedule.
“The department knew that this project was very impactful to the public,” Deaner wrote in an email. “So we added an incentive for them if they finished early, which required them to mobilize additional resources.”
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