Federal grant provides upgrades to Greene County highways

By Gary Scott on August 31, 2017 at 7:52am

Greene County will see safety upgrades on their highways starting sometime over the next two years.

According to the Jacksonville Journal Courier, highway guardrails throughout Greene County will be improved to fit current specifications thanks to a $1 million dollar federal grant.

The county released learned that it would be the recipient of the million dollar grant being issued through the Federal Highway Administration and Illinois Department of Transportation, according to Highway Superintendent David Marth. As part of the grant, Greene County will also match 10 percent of the grant, which it hopes to use state matching assistance funds to cover. If state assistance funds don’t provide enough for the 10 percent, Greene County’s highway fund will cover the amount remaining.

According to the article, this grant comes as part of the Highway Safety Improvement Program, with the total cost of the project coming in around $1.2 million dollars.

Greene County comes in as one of 35 counties statewide that were selected for funding year. According to Marth, due to the fact that this is a fiscal year grant, construction won’t begin until the fall of 2018 at the earliest, with the fall of 2019 as the latest possible date for the beginning of construction.