Governor Kay Ivey and other officials held a ceremony to break ground on a project to construct a four-lane highway spanning rural western Alabama from north to south. The new roadway is expected to cost about $758 million dollar over five years. The West Alabama Corridor project will provide an interstate-type highway that will eventually connect Mobile and Tuscaloosa. A bypass at the Marengo County city of Linden is the first phase of the project. Officials in the Black Belt region have long cited the lack of access to four-lane highways as a factor holding back development in the area.
There’s speculation in the press that Alabama could receive $7 billion dollars from the bipartisan infrastructure plan pushed by the Biden administration. The $1 trillion dollar package includes $110 billion dollars to repair roads and bridges in the U.S. Additionally, an estimated 4% of Alabama’s heavily traveled bridges are seriously in need of repair.
