Transportation Secretary Jimmy Wriston still ranks Appalachian Corridor H, the King Coal Highway and the Coalfields Expressway as the top priorities for West Virginia’s road construction program at a time of historic federal funding.
“These are top of the list. These are things that we’re going to concentrate on,” Wriston told lawmakers on Sunday.
He said progress will be “significant” for the King Coal Highway, a 95-mile stretch through McDowell, Mercer, Mingo, Wyoming, and Wayne counties as well as for the Coalfields Expressway, a multi-lane highway connecting the West Virginia Turnpike at Beckley with U.S. 23 at Slate, Va.
And he sees a conclusion to work on Corridor H.
“I think it’s safe to say the end of construction on Corridor H, the end is in site,” Wriston said of the longstanding work to build four-lane highway from central West Virginia to the Virginia line.
Wriston was providing an update to lawmakers Sunday during an interim meeting of the Oversight Commission on Department of Transportation Accountability.
Senator Chandler Swope, R-Mercer, asked several questions of Wriston aimed at eliciting more detail about progress on the southern West Virginia highways.
On the Coalfields Expressway, Swope asked specifically about when a contract for work on Mullens to Welch would kick in.
“The design work is well under way now for the next section between Mullens and the Twin Falls Connector, which we’ve added to the scope of this project,” Wriston said. “So that project is the one to look for because that’s the one that will start the drum beating. Once that occurs, we will have one project under construction, one project under design until we get to the Virginia line.”
Swope followed up by asking, “What’s the timeline of completion of both projects? When could we look forward to those segments?”
“That would put us 2028 to Welch,” Wriston said. “That would be an aggressive estimate.”
Swope asked how many contracts will be necessary to extend the Coalfields Expressway to the Virginia line. “Do you have any estimate what the total cost of that might be and how long it might take?”
“From Welch to the Virginia line? I think that’s about $1.3 to $1.5 billion,” Wriston responded.
“How many dollars would it take to get to the Virginia border?” Swope asked.
“From where we are today?” Wriston asked for clarification. “It’s probably about $2 billion.”
Swope: “How many years of construction time would that be?”
Wriston: “Typically it would be 25, but I think we can do much better than that. I think we’re looking at slightly more than a decade.”
Swope then turned questions toward the King Coal Highway. “Can you give us a segment of that being next and what the time frame looks like?”
Wriston described a similar approach on King Coal. “Probably once that drum starts beating then I would say the clock’s running and we’ll have a construction project, a design project all the way through.”
“What’s the scope of that project compared to the $2 billion you just referenced?” Swope asked.
“It’s nearly the same,” Wriston said.
Swope commented, “I would have thought it would be a great deal bigger with a lot more mileage.”
The mileage aspect is true, Wriston said, “but we’re taking a look at some different approaches maybe where we can use Route 52 to a degree and only build two lanes maybe.”
More:
- Wriston, in his remarks to legislators, noted that a federal bridge rehabilitation program amounts to $548 million over five years. “This is a really big program. This is something we’re really going to make an impact with in West Virginia.”
- A national electric vehicle formula program amounts to about $45.6 million, Wriston said. “This is new to us. This is going to be full of challenges.