MORGANTOWN — Improvements to Green Bag Road touted as necessary in order to improve traffic flow and route heavy trucks around, instead of through, downtown Morgantown have cleared the environmental assessment process with a finding of no significant impact.
The Roads to Prosperity project, now estimated at $19 million — including $3 million in right-of-way improvements in fiscal year 2024 and $16 million in intersection construction in fiscal year 2025 — will impact 1.65 miles of Green Bag Road between Napa Auto Parts and Aarons Creek Road.
The work will include a widening of Green Bag Road as well as roundabouts at the intersections of Green Bag Road and Mississippi Street and Green Bag Road and Kingwood Pike/Dorsey Avenue, as well as various pedestrian and stormwater upgrades.
But don’t expect it to pull the trucks out of Morgantown — at least not without significant additional work on the Green Bag corridor. Specifically, the steep S curve where Green Bag meets Don Knotts Boulevard (119) will need to be addressed.
“That brings up part two of the project. What we now are looking at is a RAISE Grant that would continue the roadway all the way to the Don Knotts Boulevard intersection,” Monongalia County Commission president and MPO Policy Board member Tom Bloom said. “That would not only make it suitable for the trucks but we could also address that intersection, which is a problem.”
Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization Executive Director Bill Austin said the body has asked the DOH to include the remaining portions of Green Bag Road as one of three federal RAISE (Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity) grants for which the state can apply.
Austin said that if the project isn’t selected for inclusion by the state, the MPO will submit its own application.
“We have a very rough estimate that the cost of the constructing the remainder of the project (the section from Luckey Lane to Deckers Creek Boulevard and the section from Mississippi Street to Don Knotts Boulevard) would be about $18 million,” Austin said. “Of course that estimate is subject to change.”
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