US31E revised route announced

By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette

US31E Project Alignments Click to thumbnails to enlarge (please wait for images to load)

US31E South Nazareth to KY509

US31E Middle Section KY509 to

US31E North Section to Salt River Bridge

It appears that the residents along US31E between Bardstown and Cox's Creek will get their wish of keeping the "new" US31E on the same route as the current road.

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, Department of Highways office in Elizabethtown has announced the final route for the highway in mailings to residents and property owners along the route.

The final alignment places a rebuilt US31E along the existing road up until the KY509 intersection in Cox's Creek. There the road will veer to the west and run overland, avoiding several dangerous spots in the current route.

The new road will intersect with the current road just north of the historic Forman house and then run to the east of present route to avoid Whitney and Lighthouse stables. The road crosses back across the current 31E and runs west of the existing highway south of Hunnington Hills and Ridgecrest Farms subdivisions.

The road bypasses High Grove and the winding highway north of that area, connecting back with the existing roadway just south of the existing Salt River bridge.

While the route will please many south of Cox's Creek, there are still a number of people north of KY509 who will be impacted by the overland route. There's no way to build such a project without such impacts, but that doesn't ease the pain much.

The Department of Highways announcement underscored that the southernmost part of the project will still require some sort of traffic control devices such as the raised medians and roundabouts. How exactly the state's concerns will be addressed have not yet been ironed out yet, the letter said. State engineers will be conducting an access management study on the southern portion of the proposed route.

The next step in the project is to get federal approval of the project in the form of a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) from the Federal Highway Administration. This will take approximately a year, the state said.

Until this approval is obtained, the announced alignments are still subject to change.

In discussions with project engineers, the general feeling was that if all the preliminary studies were completed correctly, the federal approval will not be a problem, particularly in the wake of the changes last year in federal law that give more control over encroachment on historic properties.