The Rogers Road Bridge Comes Without a Detour. Heritage Drivers Get a Temporary Road Instead

On October 20, eight contractors submitted bids to replace the Rogers Road railroad crossing with a bridge over the CSX S-Line. The lowest bid was about $40.1 million. Even so, the first thing that changes for anyone driving from Heritage toward South Main Street won't be a bridge. NCDOT plans to keep Rogers Road open the whole time. That means the early work happens around the crossing: a temporary road beside the tracks, and a few familiar turns moved a short way east.

That's the part of this project that affects daily driving. And for now it has a start window, a price, and no published end date.

What the October 20 bids say

NCDOT's as-read bid tabulation for project P-5707, contract C204338, lists eight bidders. The state engineer's estimate was $43,637,000.

About $14.4 million separates the highest and lowest bids on the same set of plans. Two came in under the state's estimate and six came in over. A tabulation shows bids as they were read aloud. It doesn't award the contract, so Blythe is the apparent low bidder until NCDOT says otherwise.

The bid figure also differs from the $46.2 million that has been in the news. That larger number is NCDOT's estimate for the whole project, as listed in the current State Transportation Improvement Program. It breaks down to $42.5 million for construction and utilities and $3.7 million for right-of-way purchases. NCDOT says it finished buying the land it needs in January 2024.

Why the start date depends on who you ask

Three sources give three start dates, and all three hold up. NCDOT's project page, last updated October 8, still lists construction as starting in October 2026 and notes the date may change. The Town of Wake Forest says late 2026 or early 2027. The Wake Forest Business & Industry Partnership gave the most detailed timeline. After the October letting, contracting would take about two more months, and work on the separation "should begin in earnest by January 2027."

Some work on the project has been going on since September. That same article reports that crews have been putting in a natural gas line under Rogers Road near Capital Creek Drive, with lane closures from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., plus storm drainage and other utility work. If you've seen cones there on a late drive home, that was the prep for this project.

The order of work, as NCDOT has described it

The plan differs from the usual road project because Rogers Road won't close. Reporting for the Business & Industry Partnership, NCDOT's Division 5 public information officer described it this way:

P-5707 won't involve detours for motorists. Instead, NCDOT will create a temporary road adjacent to the construction for local traffic. "That gets done first," Deaner says.

Based on what the town, NCDOT and local reporting have published, the order looks like this:

1. Utility work, already underway. This is the gas line near Capital Creek Drive, done during overnight lane closures.
2. Contract award. That's the step after the October 20 bids.
3. Temporary traffic pattern. The town says NCDOT will set this up before bridge work starts so drivers can get around the work zone. NCDOT hasn't released the dates or layout yet. Its project page says it will give advance notice of major traffic changes, lane closures and access changes once they're confirmed.
4. Bridge construction. The bridge goes where the crossing is now, on Rogers Road, also known as S.R. 2052.

So for a good while, drivers will still cross the tracks at street level. The crossing will just be a temporary one beside the current road. The Business & Industry Partnership describes the affected stretch as Rogers Road from Forestville Road to just below South Main Street, a busy commercial corridor with "many businesses, medical offices, and schools." NCDOT told the Wake Forest Journal it is working with the Wake County Public School System on anything that could affect school buses, crossings and campus access, but hasn't shared details.

The turns that move east

This is where Heritage drivers will notice the most. To make room for the bridge approaches, NCDOT's design moves several connections near the crossing, as the Wake Forest Journal reported:

• Heritage Branch Road will be rerouted to meet Capital Creek Drive, about a quarter mile east of where it joins Rogers Road now. NCDOT's page puts the distance at 0.24 mile.
• The Wake Forest Heritage Business Park West driveway will move to a new intersection about 300 feet east.
• The Heritage Professional Park West entrance will move about 200 feet east.

Those distances are small on a map, but these are turns people make out of habit, such as the way into an office park or the connection to Capital Creek Drive. The design map that labels Rogers Road, Forestville Road, Heritage Branch Road and Capital Creek Drive is dated December 2023. Treat these moves as NCDOT's current design, not a final as-built layout.

Some of the work won't show at all. The project replaces the 96-inch culvert under Rogers Road with a 108-inch pipe. Retaining walls at the approaches are meant to keep the amount of private land the project takes to a minimum.

What the finished bridge carries

When it's done, the bridge will carry two 12-foot travel lanes in each direction, one 12-foot left-turn lane, and a 5½-foot concrete sidewalk on each side. The approaches will have 5-foot sidewalks on both sides, set 4 feet back from traffic. Today this stretch is a street-level rail crossing. Once the bridge opens, you'll be able to walk over the S-Line on a sidewalk with a buffer between you and traffic.

Nobody has said when that will be. Asked about completion, the NCDOT spokesperson told the Business & Industry Partnership there's no timeline yet: "You just don't know what's going to happen with the weather."

Why Rogers Road is first

Rogers Road is first in line because of passenger rail. The News & Observer reported on October 15 that NCDOT is removing S-Line road crossings to prepare for frequent, faster passenger trains, and Rogers Road is one of them. The same report says NCDOT plans to extend Amtrak Piedmont service to Wake Forest by 2032. In January 2025, the paper had reported a hoped-for 2030 start. The newer target is two years later.

NCDOT's Raleigh to Richmond project page calls the funded Raleigh-to-Wake Forest section the first phase, with several grade separations, on a line designed for speeds up to 110 mph between Raleigh and Petersburg. The Business & Industry Partnership calls the Rogers Road bridge the first upgrade supporting the S-Line initiative. The idea isn't new. It was first studied in the early 2000s as part of the Southeast High-Speed Rail project and approved in a 2017 Federal Railroad Administration Record of Decision. Since then NCDOT has changed the design to work around homes and businesses built near the crossing.

Rogers Road isn't the only crossing on the list. The town lists Ligon Mill Road, S.R. 2044, as another proposed grade separation over the same tracks. Its current design shifts the road about 130 feet south, and the existing at-grade crossing is planned to stay open while it's built. Like Rogers Road, the Ligon Mill plan keeps traffic moving while the new crossing goes up.

Getting the dates when they post

NCDOT will announce the temporary traffic pattern before it changes anything you drive. You can sign up for text or email alerts on the P-5707 project page. Questions go to [email protected], or call 984-205-6615 and use code 1830. For other closures around town, the town's Traffic Alerts page lists every planned closure.

If you're thinking about how a Rogers Road project with no published end date might affect a home on this side of Heritage, or the drive to work from one, Carolina Elite Realty Group keeps track of these corridor changes as they happen. We're glad to walk you through what's been published and what's still unknown. Schedule Your Consultation.