MORGANTOWN — The opening phase of construction on a new I-79 Exit 155 is one year away.
Megan O’Reilly, director of external relations with WestRidge, explained as much during Thursday’s meeting of the Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization Policy Board.
O’Reilly said WestRidge, which helped finance preliminary design and engineering of the redesigned interchange, is collaborating with the county and the West Virginia Division of Highways to keep things moving.
“We recently worked with the DOH to expedite construction of the project. To accomplish that we’ve divided the larger project into two contracts,” she said.
The first bit of work will expand and raise the bridges carrying I-79 over Chaplin Hill Road.
“We are looking at design this summer and moving to construction in late spring or summer of 2024,” O’Reilly said.
Phase II construction will include the entrance and exit ramps as well as a new divergent diamond interchange with a westbound flyover.
She said a timeline for Phase II will be determined once Phase I gets underway.
In other MPO news, the policy board approved a scope of work for the forthcoming downtown microsimulation study.
The $500,000 study to be led by planning and design consulting firm Kimley-Horn will begin this fall with data collection on vehicle and pedestrian movements at dozens of locations in and around Morgantown’s downtown area.
That data, along with the regional travel demand model traffic counts, will then be plugged into software allowing the firm to look at how various proposed changes would impact traffic flows.
“We give you traffic volumes and peak period traffic volumes with our regional travel demand model, but this is working on a minute-to-minute scale. It’s much more focused,” MPO Executive Director Bill Austin said. “It’s a getting the microscope on the ants kind of study.”
Some of the more dramatic scenarios already submitted for review are changes to or removal of the Grumbein’s Island pedestrian crossing at the Mountainlair; a rerouting or reconfiguration of Willey Street; and a reconfiguration or elimination of the downtown’s one-way street grid.
Austin said the study should be close to wrapping up by this time next year.
“Then we can all argue about the alternatives we want,” he joked, adding “It will be the most informed discussion of all those issues that we will have had as far as what it does to traffic operations.”
Policy Board member Ron Justice said the influence of this process on the city’s future can’t be overstated, particularly considering the 10-acre Richwood redevelopment looming on the doorstep of the city’s downtown.
“I think this study and direction is going to be maybe one of the most important processes that has taken place in the history of Morgantown because we’ve got so much redevelopment opportunity within that,” he said.
