Despite promises of improvements for decades, a span of Alabama Highway 53 that stretches from Huntsville to Ardmore near the Alabama-Tennessee state line has remained a heavily traveled thoroughfare that poses public safety concerns.
Last weekend, two lives were claimed in an accident on Highway 53 near Ardmore, prompting State Rep. Andy Whitt (R-Harvest) to use social media to garner attention for action.
During an appearance on Huntsville radio WVNN’s “The Jeff Poor Show” on Tuesday, Whitt elaborated on his concerns and noted it had been a long-existing issue for residents of northwest Madison County and northeast Limestone County.
“All of my life, they have been discussing four-laning Highway 53,” Whitt said. “For over 40 years, we have misled the people of Madison and Limestone County in the fact that saying Highway 53 would be four-laned. You know, our citizens expect better. They deserve better. And they’ve told better. This is a very dangerous road. And it needs immediate attention.”
“Speaker [Mac] McCutcheon and I were talking about it two or three weeks ago,” he added. “He said he remembers on the side of Highway 53 he was a child catching the school bus that when he stopped in the afternoon at the local country store, people saw engineers and markers going up on Highway 53, and they were thinking, ‘OK, now is the time we’re getting a four-lane Highway 53.’”
According to statistics provided by Whitt, over 17,000 cars pass through the intersection of Old Railroad Bed Road and Highway 53 on a daily basis, a major intersection on the route, which far exceeds “any acceptable numbers” for a two-lane road. He also noted that five of the top 10 most dangerous intersections in entire Madison County cross Highway 53, with one intersection averaging 5.57 accidents per week based on 2017 numbers.
Whitt tells Yellowhammer News the estimated cost for 3.4 miles of four-lane improvements is $30.9 million.
He also cited the 2015 dust-up between then-State Sen. Bill Holtzclaw (R-Madison) and current Alabama Department of Transportation director John Cooper that resulted in roughly $100 million in funding being pulled from Holtclaw’s district as another possible cause for delay.
However, Whitt told “The Jeff Poor Show” that local officials are continuing to make the project a priority.
“It’s sad and ironic at the same time that just this past week, our delegation met with [Madison County Commission] chairman Dale Strong,” he continued. “We met with the mayor’s office and several other individuals just to talk about priorities. [Highway] 53 was one of those. The city of Huntsville made it clear to me that it was one of their top three priorities to have that northwest corridor four-laned. We’ve done it everywhere else. We’ve got it on [Interstate] 565. We’re headed over east, north on [U.S. Highway] 231 into Tennessee. We are just lacking that four-lane road to carry out to the interstate in the northwest corner of Madison County but also carrying it further over into Limestone County.”
Whitt recounted former Gov. Fob James’ pledge in 1995 on a cotton wagon in Ardmore to four-lane, yet it still remains uncompleted. He said the hold-up had been a shift of priorities throughout administration in Montgomery.
“It would get shuffled down the stack,” he said. “That is unacceptable to me. It has been on there. It needs to stay on there. We’re going to work hard to do that.”
The project could get priority given the growth of the area, including the forthcoming Mazda Toyota Manufacturing facility under construction in eastern Limestone County.
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University, the editor of Breitbart TV and host of “The Jeff Poor Show” from 2-5 p.m. on WVNN in Huntsville.
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