Proposed bypass draws large crowd to Linden meeting

Scores of Marengo County residents crowded the MCEDA/Extension building in Linden Monday to find out more about the Linden bypass project announced at a groundbreaking ceremony Friday by Gov. Kay Ivey.

Large aerial photographs of the proposed route were spread on tables for people to study. Representatives from the Alabama Department of Transportation and from Volkert, the engineering firm doing the design work, answered hundreds of questions thrown at them as residents milled around the room.

The bypass, the first project in the ambitious four-lane route connecting Thomasville to Tuscaloosa, is scheduled to begin in the spring of 2022 and is estimated to cost some $750 million.

The route is broken into two phases. The first will connect U.S. Hwy. 43 south of Linden to Alabama 28, and the second from there to Alabama 69 east of Providence.

Matt Erickson, ALDOT regional engineer, said the project is expected to take five to six years to complete. As of now the state has obtained 95 percent of the rights-of-way needed to begin the work.

Stan Biddick, ALDOT design engineer said the goal of the state is to provide a four-lane road in every county to connect to an Interstate highway. Right now, he continued, there are 14 counties in the state – including Clarke, Marengo and Hale – without that connection.

At one time the state had proposed a four-lane freeway connecting Alabama’s Gulf Coast to the Shoals, roughly along U.S. Hwy. 43. Biddick said that plan was abandoned some 10 years ago because of federal fund restrictions. The new project is being paid for with Build Alabama money generated by the increase in gasoline tax passed by the Alabama legislature two years ago.

The current proposed route instead leaves Hwy. 43 and follows Alabama 69 through Marengo and Hale counties to tie into the existing four-lane highway beginning at Moundville.

Biddick said the cost going through the wetlands of the route along Hwy. 43 “was so far out of being considered.”