Highway 431 Blog

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Road Construction In Alabama ::

I almost titled this "Road Construction In Huntsville" 'til I thought about some of my other experiences when I lived at Honeycomb and dealt with the widening of Highway 431. The reason I think of this is that there is a road construction project, of sorts, going on in South Huntsville to build overpasses on South Memorial Parkway. I am struck at how road construction projects here in Alabama are a start-stop-go-stop roller coaster. Preliminary work was done a couple of years ago, but there has been no work in months. When Highway 431 was being widened I remember when almost the entire road had been widened to 4 lanes, but the needed bridge construction over Honeycomb Creek had not even begun. I still don't understand why the entire widening project, other than this bridge, was completed before the bridge construction was done.

A few days ago I posted about the little known Metropolitan Planning Organization and I began to wonder if this collection of civic leaders is also involved in the road planning or is that simply a function of the state government.

When I lived in North Georgia and Atlanta road construction projects seemed to logically go from concept to completion without long months of inactivity. Seems to me that this would be a logical progression around here, but I guess I would be wrong!

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