Widening the Road

By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) had impressive turnout for their presentation last Thursday on proposed options for US Route 60 improvements through Pleasant Valley.

The cabinet presented four options to the public for changes to the stretch of roadway between the Mountain Materials quarry and the intersection with KY 182. Two of those options would construct an entirely new route, just to the north of the current roadway, and reconnecting with US 60 just past the Pleasant Valley Cemetery. The other two options would follow the current route and widen the existing roadway by either adding a center turning lanes and gutters or maintaining the current two lanes but adding extended, paved shoulders.

All options would extend it to three lanes and guttering from 182 to the I-64 interchange.

At least one of the options along the existing route would require some relocations. Twelve residential and three commercial properties could be impacted, KYTC noted – though some of those were because of septic tanks, not structures, and might not actually require a relocation.

KYTC representatives at the event explained that these plans are part of ongoing improvement projects that target areas where safety could be improved. They noted that more than 6,000 vehicles travel this stretch of road every day, and that 11 percent of the traffic is made up of gravel trucks and other large commercial vehicles.

KYTC District 9 representative Allen Blair elaborated on where the idea came from following the meeting.

“We’re always looking at areas that we haven’t improved,” Blair said. “But most ideas and most projects kind of bubble up from local residents, local officials, or the area development district, and then they get on a list of future projects. That’s how this sort of filtered up from the local level to us.”

He explained there was money in the six-year highway plan for planning and design, which is where this project started, but the other funding would still need to be procured before anything moved forward.

“The first step is always public feedback, public awareness of it, just to kind of see what the people think should happen,” he continued. “So that’s kind of where we started. I think it’s fair to say that we’ve been asked about that stretch of road in the past by both local residents and officials, and everything gets put on a list, and scored and ranked and looked at… we just use our own engineering. I mean US 60 through Carter County is an old highway. It was built, I can’t tell you when, but we’re always looking at way to improve it, and… obviously the first section to be improved there was rock crusher curve – in my tenure anyway – but that’s pretty obvious because we were seeing the bulk and most of the crashes and most of the issues that we could get complaints about would be rock crusher curve.”

That was completed in 2009, he noted, and no other work has been done along the route since. But it has been on the radar. It’s just the nature of the game that these projects move slowly. Not only do they have to determine which option the public prefers, but then they have to procure funding and then begin paperwork before any ground is broken. The soonest they would expect any road construction to begin would be 2027 – that’s assuming right-of-way is procured in 2025 and utility relocation begins in 2026.

There is also the possibility that residents could choose a fifth option, Blair noted, and decide not to make any changes to the current roadway.

At least one resident at the public meeting noted that there have been very few accidents along this

stretch of roadway over “the last 30 years” he’d lived in his home, and suggested the first two options, which would bypass the residential area with a new route, was little more than a state funded “driveway for Mountain.”

Blair said if that is one of the options chosen, the section of roadway with homes would be renamed something like “Old US 60” as has occurred in other projects of this sort. He said the state would ask the fiscal court to take the roadway over into the county road system, making them responsible for upkeep, but they would continue to maintain it until that occurred.

“We would ask them to take it over, but that’s a decision far into the future,” he said. “But, until it would be taken over by the county or the city or something, we would maintain it still. There’s lots of sections of highway like that. We still maintain the old roads.”
He said it was much too early in the process to speculate on that, but that the state would continue to maintain some sections no matter what.

“It’s way too early to speculate about, but obviously we’re going to make a new turn to reach 182, so we have to kind of maintain some of that.”
He also wanted to remind residents that what they saw at the event were, “just preliminary lines on paper.”

“Those are not actually surveyed, in designs, down to the foot level,” he said. “So things can always changes a little bit. Our goal is to improve the highway and reduce the impact on property owners as much as possible. That’s the whole goal. The less impact we can have on residents, the better the project will be.”

Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com