CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The sale of the $172 million in bonds to finance road projects in southern West Virginia closed Tuesday, and the funds were transferred to the West Virginia Division of Highway’s State Road Construction Account.
The work funded by the bond sale includes construction on King Coal Highway, road improvement efforts such as widening and adding lanes and bridge work.
“They’re going to try to have them all bid out by the end of this year,” West Virginia Parkways Authority General Manager Greg Barr said. “Some of them, they hope to even get some work started on it.”
According to Barr, construction is already underway to add additional turning lanes to state Route 10 in Logan, Wyoming and Mercer counties, in which $80 million has been set aside.
.He added crews are hopeful to begin work on a 3.8-mile extension road of the King Coal Highway, an $85 million effort.
Additional projects include around $4 million worth of bridge work in Nicholas and Wyoming counties.
Barr said $1.1 billion in orders were received before the sale closed Tuesday.
“We’re not in the market that often,” he said. “We just followed on the heels of the GO (general obligation) bond issue and the Garvey bonds. You wonder if people are tired of West Virginia bonds, but obviously, they weren’t. They were very interested in them.”
The bonds will be paid by means of increased tolls on the West Virginia Turnpike, in which tolls will increase from $2 to $4 for passenger vehicles and rates will double for commercial vehicles beginning in January. Motorists will also be able to purchase a three-year toll pass for $24 by the end of this year.
Traffic engineers project revenues will be $330 million, but Barr said if revenues are better than estimates, the state may look into selling additional bonds worth up to $500 million.
“We’ll probably get a read on that by spring of next year. We will have gone through the initial sign-up stages of the single-fee discount program, we will have had three to five months of the new toll rates being in effect, and we’ll be able to get a read on just how well we’re doing compared to what the traffic studies said we’ll do,” he said.
Barr said traffic engineers have typically been conservative in regards to their estimates, which makes him optimistic about possible revenue.