MORGANTOWN — It appears as if the West Virginia Division of Highways has changed course on its plans for River Road.
In recent months, the DOH has asked the Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization’s policy board to add nearly $10 million in River Road slide repair projects to its Transportation Improvement Program over the next two years.
This after explaining in September that the Division basically intended to keep an eye on the slip-prone route after a major slide in April 2018 closed the lower portion of the road — between the Westover Bridge and DuPont Road — for some 500 days.
In the immediate aftermath of the April 2018 slide, DOH officials said that section of road would very likely never reopen as they’d identified some 20 slides that would cost at least $6 million to address.
After the road was unexpected reopened in September, Spokesman Brent Walker explained that the DOH spent that time monitoring the hillside and had not seen any additional movement, so the choice was made to clean it up and reopen it to traffic.
At the time, Walker also noted, “To fix the slide properly, it would have cost approximately $6 million.”
Now it looks like the state is ready to make that investment, and then some.
In order to be eligible for federal highways dollars, projects must be included as a part of the MPO’s Transportation Improvement Plan.
“The way the feds have written the policy is no surface transportation funding can be spent within the urban area without the approval of the MPO,” MPO Executive Director Bill Austin said.
In August, the DOH asked the MPO for a TIP amendment to add a $2.5 million River Road slide project to its 2019 plan. Of that amount, $2 million is expected to be federal funding.
This past week, the DOH asked the MPO for two amendments to its 2020 plan tied to River Road slides — one totaling $1,475,000 for right of way acquisition and one totaling $6 million for construction. Federal funds will make up a combined $5,980,000 of those two amounts.
According to the DOH’s request to the MPO, all three projects will address a .67-mile portion of the road.
While local officials have said they’re not sure what’s behind the change of heart, there is some speculation that the investment in bolstering River Road may be an indication that the DOH does not plan to build a new Interstate 79 interchange providing access to the park.
The Dominion Post reached out to the DOH for further information — including whether the road would be rebuilt to better handle the heavy trucks heading to the industrial park, as was indicated during the most recent MPO meeting, and why the DOH had seemingly changed its course of action in regard to spending millions to address such a short stretch of road.
Walker responded by saying there has not been any additional movement of the hillside.
Further, he explained, “We are in the process of having core samples taken to help the design work that is currently going on for future projects to repair the numerous slides/slips in the area.”
