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Those of you who’ve done the U.S. 78 slog from Memphis to Birmingham and points beyond: it’s not going to be a lot better for at least another seven years, although you can look forward to most of the road being open in 2008:
Future Interstate 22 has a new name, but it may take a full decade to get the road completed—including at least three years just to perform drainage and dirt work in Birmingham.
“It could be as early as late 2011 or in 2012 when we could be finished,” said Tony Harris, the special assistant for the director for public affairs at ALDOT. “If there are any delays to funding or to construction, it could put us as late as 2015.”
This, mind you, was work that was supposed to be underway by now. At this rate, Mississippi might actually have their work on connecting U.S. 78 to some part—any part—of the Interstate system done by then.
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4 comments:
As someone who spent his life from age 0 to age 30 watching the snail’s pace of work on US 72, I’m not surprised. I used to joke that US 72 was not a job, but a career.
Hey Chris, I found you site quite by accident. I live in Memphis and am looking at a place in Olive Branch. I’m also a trucker and keep seeing the signs and hearing the talk about the new interstate. I got online hoping to see how close this new monster is going to come to the place I want to buy… I’ve really enjoyed your photos of Ontario (particularly the one that says “Go Home!”) as I don’t drive cross-country anymore. You’re a funny guy. I went looking for that gaelon browser on the link you supplied as I really like Mozilla’s Firefox browser, but the link is dead. Keep posting the good stuff. —Cheri
P.S. Truckers have a saying: there are only 2 seasons – winter and construction. (All that federal money has to go somewhere! ;o)
Galeon is long-gone, replaced by Epiphany under Linux. Though these days I just use Firefox on both Windows and Linux.
What’s weird is that even when work is done, like the segment between SR 129 and SR 233 that’s been done for two years, they still won’t open it. Why they’d open it at SR 13 makes no sense since the part from SR 13 to Carbon Hill is practically done already. Why divert the extra traffic to SR 13? I assume the light they’re talking about putting up would be where 13 intersects “old” (i.e. current) 78? Have they even let most of the sections between Jasper and Graysville yet? Jasper and Walker CR 22 just have the bridges and grading done, nothing else. The interchange is up at CR 81 but last time I looked nothing much (if anything) had been done between CR 81 and Graysville.
We’ll all be in flying cars by the time Alabama gets their I-22 work done. No wonder they are keeping the “Future I-22 Corridor” signs covered outside of Jasper.