RESIDENTS ReVIEW Possible CHanges To Alternate ROUTES Of HEARTLAND PARKWAY

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet held its third public meeting on the proposed Heartland Parkway Tuesday night at Adair County High School to let residents who live along the proposed road from Columbia to Campbellsville view the alternate routes and make comments about them.
According to John Moore from the Elizabethtown Department of Highways District Office, who is the project manager, the main purpose of Tuesday's meeting was to show residents any changes that have been made in the alternate routes since they were presented at the last public meeting in March.
"The alternate routes have been developed and refined from information gathered at the first two meetings," Moore explained. "This meeting is to allow people to see what has been done, and to see if we overlooked anything.
"This is basically the last opportunity to make any significant changes before the environmental assessments are made of the alternate routes."
At the meeting in March, basically three alternate routes were presented for the four-lane, partially controlled access road. All routes are all centered on the present KY 55 North.
One alternative goes along the center of KY 55, with the roadway being widened on both sides. Another alternative calls for the current two lanes of KY 55 to be used as the southbound lanes of the parkway and two new lanes built to the east of 55 to serve as the northbound lanes. The other alternative calls for the current two lanes of 55 to be used as the northbound lanes and two new lanes built on the west to serve as the southbound lanes.
Since that meeting, Moore said that in some areas, the alternate routes have been narrowed down to two, while in other areas alternates have been deleted and added. One example he cited was the proposals for intersecting with the Columbia Bypass.
"We had four alternates for the bypass intersection, but one of them was eliminated due to engineering reasons," he explained. "However, we added another alternate in that one's place, so there's still four possibilities."
Once all the data gathered at Tuesday night's meeting - and a subsequent one next week in Taylor County - has been reviewed, any needed changes in the routes will be made. Environmental assessment of the alternate routes will begin.
"The environmental assessment will take the most of next year to be done," Moore noted. "Once they are completed, we'll have another public meeting, either late next year or in early 2011 to let the public see the results."
In 2011, the preferred route will be identified, and it will be submitted to the Federal Highway Administration for final approval in 2012.
Photo: DAVID LINDEMAN, left, from Palmer Engineering, talked with Anthony and Tammy Reece as they checked out maps of the proposed routes for the Heartland Parkway to see how their business, Anthony's Auto Sales, which is located on KY 55 in Coburg, would be affected. (Photo by Paul B. Hayes)