Soaring costs put Raleigh’s Six Forks Road improvements way over budget
Plans to widen part of Six Forks Road are over budget again, leaving city leaders wondering how to move forward.
Expanding a portion of one of Raleigh’s major north-south roads from four to six lanes and adding a pedestrian path will now cost an estimated $93.5 million, up from $56.1 million just last year.
This “unprecedented” 67% increase reflects growing construction costs and the real estate market, Kenneth Ritchie, the city’s assistant transportation director, told the City Council on Tuesday.
Raleigh has already scaled back the road work. The original plan was to widen two miles of Six Forks Road, from Interstate 40 to Lynn Road, and to add a separated bike lane and pedestrian path.
The city budgeted $60 million for the project before the cost of supplies and acquiring land sent the estimate soaring to $119 million.
In 2024, city leaders agreed to only widen a mile of the road near North Hills, between Rowan Street and Millbrook Road, with a combined path for bikes and pedestrians.
“I don’t see a lot of room to to reduce this project anymore,” Council member Jonathan Lambert-Melton said. “We already cut off segments. We’re doing the bare minimum on the multimodal infrastructure. And so I don’t know what the answer is. I’m just shocked that after we did all that work to get it within budget, it’s doubled in the past year.”
Raleigh transportation bond
The Six Forks Road project was part of the city’s $206.7 million transportation bond that included widening and improving over a dozen roads.
It may have been too ambitious.
“When we took on this bond in 2017, it was way too big,” City Manager Marchell Adams-David said. “And the problem with big bonds is that you can’t deliver the projects fast enough.”
The city began design work on all the transportation bond projects after the bond passed, said Paul Kallam, the city’s transportation director. Instead, design should have been underway on some of the projects so construction could start on them as soon as the money was available. Then design could start on the others, he said.
The soonest the city can put another bond on the ballot is in 2026, and city leaders will meet this spring to discuss timing of future bonds. Bonds are typically a cheaper financing options for cities to construct large projects and are paid for with a property tax increase.
“I do want to remind folks that the financial uncertainty for our residents has really changed since how things looked last fall, and I don’t necessarily know what the appetite is going to be for [bonds],” Mayor Pro Tem Stormie Forte cautioned.
People who can afford property tax increases will need to be reminded the city has to “look out for folks who can’t afford it,” she said.
City leaders also need to consider risking the “public’s trust” if it fails to complete projects that were promised in other bonds.
“And so if we call another bond and we say, ‘No, for real, we’re going to do it this time,’ I’m not sure we’ve given them a lot of incentive to believe us,” said Council member Megan Patton. “Six Forks Road, it’s agonizing to see that that’s back being a conundrum.”
City staff will return to the council in May with options for how to proceed.
This story was originally published March 14, 2025 at 12:22 PM.
