The NC Department of Transportation announced Friday that work to extend and widen Booker Dairy Road in North Smithfield will start very soon.
The NC Department of Transportation awarded a $13.2 million contract late last month to Branch Civil Inc. of Roanoke, Virginia. They will widen the existing two lanes of Booker Dairy Road into four lanes with a raised median between Buffalo Road just to the east of Bradford Street. From there, the contractor will extend the four lanes eastward onto a new location, paralleling the existing Booker Dairy Road, before connecting with Ava Gardner Avenue at the Wal-Mart.
Ava Gardner Avenue is now a dead end, but it will be improved as part of this project and get a traffic signal where it intersects with North Brightleaf Boulevard (US 301) next to the old Golden Corral location.
“We are widening this road to four lanes to ease congestion,” said Ryan Beamer, a NC DOT resident engineer in the Smithfield office. “The new location will minimize impacting residential areas and open more land to new development,”
CLICK HERE TO SEE MAP OF PROJECT
During construction, two-way traffic will be maintained on the existing portion of Booker Dairy Road.
The contract allows for construct to begin as early as Monday, February 26th but officials expect it will likely be in March before the majority of the work gets underway. The project must be completed no later than the Fall of 2019.
The project is a continuation of earlier work that extended Booker Dairy Road from Buffalo Road west to US 70 Business (West Market Street).
