For decades, travelers making their way between Memphis and Birmingham had to rely on U.S. Highway 78, which at times through Alabama was a windy two-lane road beyond Jasper as it made its way through Carbon Hill, Winfield, Hamilton and to the Alabama-Mississippi state line.
However, over a period of 30 years, transportation officials in Mississippi and Alabama made improvements to existing parts of U.S. Highway 78 and building new stretches of controlled-access highway to complete Corridor X, which is now known as Interstate Highway 22, with the final portion opening in 2016 at the intersection of Interstate Highways 22 and 65.
Construction spanned over decades and was considered lengthy by the standards of the beginning of President Dwight Eisenhower’s push for the Interstate highway system in America. According to U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt (AL-04), to return to a more expeditious era of highway construction, it will take pressure from the American public to overcome the environmental lobby.
“I think we could if the American people put enough pressure on Congress to do it,” he said during an interview that aired on Friday’s broadcast of Mobile radio’s FM Talk 106.5. “But right now, with the environmental lobbyists the way they are, that’s one of the things that holds up a lot of these contracts because they have to do studies upon various different areas that they’re looking to put highways and expand highways. There are just numerous things that have to be done. Of course, that did not happen back in the 50s and 60s when you had the start of the Interstate system. I don’t think you can build an Interstate system as we know it today, or if you did, it would take a hundred years to build what it took them in 20 or 30 years in the 1950s. You know, we could get to that, but with the environmental lobby the way it is — and obviously, I want to protect the environment. We all do. But there are some things that are common sense that have not even come into play.”
Aderholt said he did not anticipate the Biden infrastructure proposal as something that would improve roads and bridges and would instead be more akin to the so-called Green New Deal.
“And some of these aspects in this [Green New Deal] that I think a lot of people want to implement, a lot of the Democrats want to implement in an infrastructure bill,” he explained. “And it would just take even longer.”
“To answer your question, we could, but I don’t see that in the near future because I think the lobbying is too strong from the environmentalist component of this to allow us to move in an expeditious manner,” Aderholt added.
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly, and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.
Don’t miss out! Subscribe today to have Alabama’s leading headlines delivered to your inbox.