Design work underway on new section of the King Coal Highway near Bluefield

Aug. 12—BLUEFIELD — Design work is now underway on another section of the King Coal Highway near Bluefield.

West Virginia Transportation Secretary Jimmy Wriston confirmed the news last week to the Daily Telegraph. The design work is for a section of the four-lane corridor that would extend from the existing construction site at Airport Road toward Littlesburg Road.

"The design work is already underway," Wriston said. "All of the preliminary engineering is being done right now."

The engineering and design work on the next section of the King Coal Highway in Mercer County must be completed first before a construction contract can be awarded.

Wriston said the goal of the Department of Highways is to keep sections of the King Coal Highway under construction and design on a continuing basis.

"We aren't going to build bridges to nowhere," Wriston said. "We are going to focus on useable sections."

The King Coal Highway is West Virginia's local corridor of the future Interstate 73/74/75 routing.

Once completed the King Coal Highway will extend 95 miles through Mercer, McDowell, Mingo, Wyoming and Wayne counties. It will connect U.S. 119 near Williamson to Interstate 77 in Bluefield, and is intended to open up the Mountain State's coalfields to economic development and connect the region with markets to the north and south.

The final Interstate 73/74/75 routing is supposed to run from Detroit, Mich., to Myrtle Beach, S.C., opening up a large swath of southern West Virginia to interstate access.

Wriston said he believes the state will have funding available to finance construction of the next section of the King Coal Highway near Bluefield.

"Of course, it is a tentative plan," Wriston said in response to funding for the Littlesburg Road section of the King Coal Highway. "We have a financial plan for all of the corridors. So we will have the funding in place."

Construction is slowly winding down on the existing $58 million contract at Airport Road near Bluefield. Work on that section of the King Coal Highway got underway in 2018 as part of Gov. Jim Justice's Roads to Prosperity program.

Once the Airport Road contract is finished later this year, Wriston said the goal is to open up the King Coal Highway corridor to traffic from the K.A. Ammar Interchange and Christine West Bridge high over Stoney Ridge to Airport Road.

Work on the three interconnected projects date back more than 20 years ago. The K.A. Ammar Interchange was completed in 2003 and the Christine West Bridge in 2009. Work on the current contract along Airport Road began in 2018. However, the interchange and bridge over Stoney Ridge has never been opened to traffic.

Once the existing corridor section is opened, interstate traffic would be able to connect with Bluefield at Exit 1 and then the King Coal Highway via John Nash Boulevard and the K.A. Ammar interchange.

"Bluefield and the city down there are great partners with the DOH," Wriston said. "We are going to partner with them to do some great things."

Wriston said the Roads to Prosperity program has helped to bring economic revitalization to southern West Virginia.

Justice announced the Roads to Prosperity plan in October 2017. The $2.8 billion initiative set aside funding for highway and bridge construction, and roadway maintenance projects across the state. It would prove to be the largest infrastructure investment in the history of West Virginia.

More recently, the Coalfields Expressway project in McDowell County was added to the governor's Roads to Prosperity program.

Wriston said West Virginia is on the move with good things happening across the state.

"You are always going to have a few naysayers," he said. "But at the end we all pull together and are going to do some great stuff at every level for the citizens."

— Contact Charles Owens at cowens@bdtonline.com

— Contact Charles Owens at cowens@bdtonline.com. Follow him @BDTOwens