By: Chris Long

As the town of Wake Forest continues to make improvements to area roads, one bridge replacement will affect hundreds of students attending Heritage High School. The bridge that takes Forestville Road over Smith Creek and connects Heritage High School to the communities of Dansforth, and many others just south of the school will be replaced over the upcoming summer. Originally the plan from the town of Wake Forest was to close the bridge mid-June and to have it open just before school started again in August 2015. However, recently the town of Wake Forest has informed its residents that the bridge will now close in July and be back open in early November. This change means that the bridge will now be closed for a longer period of time that school is in session.

During the time that the bridge remains closed, traffic will be re-routed from south of the bridge to go down Burlington Mills road into Rolesville, make a left onto Main Street (US 401) in Rolesville. Drivers will then make a left onto Rodgers Road still in downtown Rolesville, then drive up Rodgers Road into Heritage, where drivers can make a left onto Forestville Road almost at the school. Early next year during the bridge closure, it will be recommended that students and their parents leave plenty of extra time to get to school, even if they don’t normally need to cross the bridge. This detour will make for huge traffic headaches both in the morning and afternoon as 1,700 students try to make a left onto Forestville Road from Rodgers, an area that already gets congested in the morning.

The bridge on Forestville Road will not be the only bridge in the area to be replaced; in the summer of 2016 the bridge that carries Rodgers Road over Smith Creek just to the east of Heritage Middle and Elementary schools will be replaced over a similar time frame.