A 7.5 mile stretch of highway, known to be one of the most dangerous roads in Morgan County, is going to be getting a face lift starting next year.
County Highway Engineer Matt Coultas informed the Morgan County Commissioners Monday morning that the last round of Rebuild Illinois funding coming to the county along with some federal highway safety money is going to be put into re-surfacing, widening, and re-striping the Concord-Arenzville Road.
Coultas says it’s something he’s wanted to do since he first became the county’s engineer: “We are anticipating a mill and overlay, but not only a mill and overlay of that roadway, but a widening to incorporate three-foot-wide asphalt shoulders with our pavement markings reinstalled, and rumble strips on the outside edges of the road to help with some of those run-off-the-road type incidents if we can prevent some of those accidents. That’s a project that we’ve got in the works, and we are supposed to start in on that [next year]. I think it is going to bid this Spring, I believe. So, hopefully after the July 1 time frame, we can get started on that project and get that road kind of upgraded, I guess you could say, and make it a little bit safer for our traveling public in that area of the county.”
Coultas anticipates that the project will cost roughly $4 million. Coultas says the federal highway safety money was attached to the project due to the highway’s rating for numerous car crashes over the last decade. Coultas hopes the new overlay does not increase speeding problems, which are already a concern for that stretch of road.