Construction along the busiest and most-traveled section of Russ Avenue in Waynesville, N.C., will soon get under way.

The work is slated to begin in January for phase two of the Russ Avenue project, which will extend the street from the Starbucks intersection, past the Ingles and Publix grocery stores, to the old Kmart plaza on the other side of the bypass interchange.

Waynesville is located in western North Carolina's Haywood County, southwest of Asheville.

For years, the town's residents knew the roadwork was coming. And while the Russ Avenue traffic congestion will be better once it is finished, everyone in the town needs to be prepared for some pain over the next 18 months, according to The Mountaineer, Haywood County's weekly news source.

"We are very conscious of the traffic out there and want to keep it as smooth as we can," said Scott Cook, who serves as the North Carolina Department of Transportation's (NCDOT) assistant resident engineer for the project.

The upcoming construction effort will be similar to the first phase of work along the less-traveled section of Russ Avenue, which The Mountaineer noted on Dec. 10 has been a driver training course of sorts ahead of the more congested phase two section. By now, nearly all motorists are adept at navigating the maze of orange construction barrels that denote the ever-shifting lane configurations, the newspaper said.

"It will be a lot of what they've already experienced on the section from Main Street to Howell Mill," Cook said.

The biggest problem will be a bottleneck resulting from fewer lanes. Instead of two lanes in each direction, at times there will only be one lane in a given direction.

An exact start date for the next round of construction has not been announced, but the Waynesville-based newspaper said phase two is likely to start after the first of the year and conclude by the fall of 2027.

NCDOT has awarded a $42.8 million construction contract to Buchanan and Sons Inc. of Whittier, N.C., to extend and expand Russ Avenue. The construction price tag does not include right-of-way property acquisition or engineering and design.

Waynesville Will Need to Brace for Roadway's Improvement

Although plans call for the new Russ Avenue to be built wider, it will still only have a pair of through-travel lanes in each direction, just as it currently does.

However, by removing the street's middle turn lane, traffic is likely to flow better. Drivers will need to make U-turns at intersections and double back to reach businesses on the other side. There also will be extra right-turn lanes added at some intersections to keep the through-travel lanes free of braking vehicles, which cause chain-reaction slowdowns.

The first order of business will be moving utilities out of the wider road footprint, Cook said. Water and sewer lines, fiber and phone lines and electrical lines will all have to be dug up and moved back as well.

"Some utilities will have to bore under Russ Avenue to get to the other side," he said.

The utility work will not be a soft launch when it comes to traffic impacts, according to The Mountaineer. Instead, lanes will be reduced soon after the start of construction to allow for utility work along the road's shoulders.

The lane work also will be carried out on one side of the road before switching to the other. Traffic will be shifted away from the side where work is being performed, which will ultimately result in fewer lanes. At times, there will only be one traffic lane in a given direction.

Which side will be done first, or exactly when the lane reductions are coming is not yet known.

"We are too early [in the process] to make that conclusion at this point," Cook said.

He added that no businesses will be blocked by the Russ Avenue construction. Wherever crews are working, orange barrels will create an access chute across the work zone into the entranceway of local businesses. Eventually, though, workers will need to cross those driveway thresholds to finish the project.

"In those situations, we would do half the driveway at a time," Cook said.

Complications could arise if there is just a single driveway entrance to a business along Russ Avenue as drivers entering and exiting an establishment would have to share one access lane.

If need be, "we could schedule to do that work at night when the business is closed," said the NCDOT engineer.

The Mountaineer noted, though, that things could get a bit dicey with the middle turning lane. It will periodically be claimed as a through-travel lane to help move the sheer volume of vehicles along Russ Avenue.

"Our goal is to maintain that access as much as we can, but there will be times when that middle turn lane is not accessible," Cook said, meaning that drivers wanting to turn left into a business from the other side of the road could hold up the vehicles behind them if they sit and wait for an opening in traffic.

However, he also said that it is possible there could be small sections of middle turn lanes here and there along the Russ Avenue corridor — that will certainly be the case at stoplights.

Meanwhile, contractors also will be wrapping up phase one work along the lower section of Russ Avenue, which has been under construction for the past 18 months.

The Mountaineer reported, though, that a missing link remains in a bridge being built within the first phase of the project. One side of the structure is not yet finished, and until then, traffic lanes are reduced to shift vehicles to one side.

Therefore, the possibility exists that phase two could commence before phase oene is entirely finished.