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I-81 road bond amendment will pay for project

By JOHN McVEY

The Journal

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — Expanding Interstate 81 to six lanes between Tabler Station Road and Apple Harvest Drive has been added to the Hagerstown Eastern Panhandle Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Transportation Improvement Program.

The $75 million project will be funded with general obligation bonds, meaning the bonds approved by voters during a special election on Oct. 7.

The Roads to Prosperity Amendment authorizes the Legislature to float about $1.6 billion in bonds to fund several highway construction and improvement projects around the state. The bonds will be used to leverage a total of about $3 billion worth of projects.

“The I-81 project should be relatively quick and relatively easy,” Perry Keller, a regional planner with the West Virginia Department of Transportation, said Wednesday at the HEPMPO’s meeting in Hagerstown. “We own the right of way. We don’t have to do an environmental assessment. It will probably start next year.”

He added that it would probably be a design-build project, meaning the contractor would design the project, rather than have separate contracts for the design and construction phases.

Usually, the HEPMPO must approve projects in which federal dollars are involved, but Keller said although only state money is being used for this project, it is a regionally significant project, which needs the HEPMPO approval.

“We’ll be rolling out just shy of $3 billion worth of projects over the next several years, which means a lot of work,” he said. “And that’s in addition to the usual $450 million worth of projects we do annually. That’s still a significant amount in our annual program.”

Keller said more projects in the Eastern Panhandle probably will be added as the process unfolds.

In addition to widening I-81, a pre-vote list touting projects throughout the state included widening W.Va. 51 from the I-81 interchange to U.S. 11 in Inwood; widening U.S. 340 from the Charles Town bypass to the Virginia line; and building a four-lane bypass around Berkeley Springs.

The HEPMPO is the federal- and state-designated transportation planning organization for Berkeley and Jefferson counties in West Virginia and Washington County, Maryland.

Its governing body is the Interstate Council, which consists of elected and appointed members from Martinsburg; Berkeley and Jefferson counties; Hagerstown, Maryland; Washington County; and Maryland and West Virginia departments of transportation.

It is funded with federal, state and local contributions.

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