A group of West and South Alabama officials touted on Tuesday the benefits of a state-financed four-lane highway cutting through the Alabama Black Belt region at a time when there are increasing calls for the money to be used for adding lanes to Interstate 65.

The mayors of Mobile, Tuscaloosa and Thomasville were joined by state lawmakers, county commissioners and small-town mayors inside a newly-refurbish library in downtown Thomasville to express their support for the West Alabama Highway corridor currently in its infancy stages.

“The highway will open up opportunities for the Black Belt of Alabama that we’ve never seen in the history of the Black Belt,” said Thomasville Mayor Sheldon Day, among the biggest champions of the highway project.

The gathering also occurred on the eve of a first-time meeting between Day and Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth, who is pushing for lawmakers to reconsider the project in favor of investing in more interstate lanes along I-65.

Officials who spoke in Thomasville said the West Alabama Highway and I-65 projects do not have be in competition with each other. They also said the addition of lanes on U.S. 43 and Alabama State Route 69 will be economic development catalysts that have the potential to re-energize the southwestern side of the state.

“We are going to use what happened (Tuesday during the news conference) as a positive to show (Ainsworth) that this is a very positive project in our state,” Day said. “There is room to do both (the West Alabama Highway and I-65). There are already hundreds of millions for I-65. We don’t want to deter any of that. It needs to be something we all work together for the greater benefit of Alabama.”

At least one Alabama state lawmaker, who shares Ainsworth’s belief that I-65 should receive prioritization, called the economic development prospects “fallacy.”

“I would simply say to look to the west at U.S. 45, which is four-laned by Mississippi, and you see little economic development and it’s sitting there as a prime example of that argument is a fallacy,” said state Senator Chris Elliott, R-Josephine, a chief critic of the project.

‘Alternative route’

In short, West Alabama Highway project calls for adding two lanes on U.S. 43 from Thomasville to Linden. North of Linden, the project includes additional lanes on Alabama State Route 69, which traverses north to Moundville.

The project has the backing of Gov. Kay Ivey’s administration and is financed largely through fuel tax revenues generated by the Rebuild Alabama Act that lawmakers approved in 2019. A small portion is under construction in Linden – an 8-mile bypass around the city – but the timeline for future iterations is unknown. The Alabama Department of Transportation is proceeding with a design-build strategy for the project’s entirety.

Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson and Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox both said the additional lanes creates a viable alternative to I-65 for hurricane evacuations and for motorists looking for different routes to the Alabama beaches.

Stimpson also said the route provides additional transportation options for the growing Alabama State Docks in Mobile.

“If you take a container and put it on a truck and come out of the port, it has one option of going north and that’s I-65,” Stimpson said. “By the end of 2025, the container port will be the largest container port on the Gulf of Mexico. By the end of 2025, we’ll have finished the deepening and widening of the port. You can visualize the increased commerce we have.”

He added, “Yes, there needs to be things done to improve (I-65). But it may be the quicker and least expensive thing to do is fix 43. We’ll have two routes coming out of Mobile to go north and connect to Tuscaloosa and Highway 22 and onto Florence.”

Maddox said the additional highway corridor will be a boon for the state’s growing auto manufacturing sector, and for the University of Alabama. He said will provide a boost to exports through Mobile and is critical for the economic revitalization of a mostly rural part of Alabama.

“There is no doubt that this area of the state of Alabama, for whatever reason, has been forgotten,” said Maddox.

Maddox also said it was important to present the West Alabama Highway project as a positive for the state at a time when others have pitted it against I-65.

“This project was placed not in a fair light,” Maddox said. “We wanted to validate the merit of this project. And it’s not about one project over another. They (both) need to be done. Our state leaders are correct. Let’s complete this project. And then find a way to take care of 65.”

Stimpson also said both projects are important but added that if “you put all your eggs into I-65, and you have challenges and wrecks on 65, it will shut everything down.”

“Having an alternative route is hugely important,” Stimpson said.

Funding questions

Elliott said he was concerned with how the project will be funded. He has said that the state plans to finance the entirety of the project without seeking federal assistance from the Biden Administration and is worried that the plan involves borrowing future fuel tax revenues to pay for it.

Elliott also noted the lack of a concrete estimate from the state on the project’s costs. An older estimate pegged the price-tag at around $760 million. He said he plans to question ALDOT officials during a legislative contract review meeting on Thursday about the expected costs on the overall project.

“The most concerning part of the project is method of finance,” he said. “The DOT intends to borrow against future gas tax and general fund revenues to pay for it. That diminishes our capacity to leverage federal funds to do other projects.”

The attention on the West Alabama Corridor comes after a summer in which Ainsworth – the state’s No. 2 elected official who is eying a run for governor in 2026 – criticized the lack of prioritization of widening I-65 from the Tennessee state line to Mobile.

Ainsworth has tweeted pictures of traffic jams this summer along I-65, which is the main north-south interstate through Alabama that leads travelers to the Gulf Coast beaches. His most recent posts occurred on Sunday, with the caption, “Another day, another massive back up of I-65. Lots of phone calls and pictures today. Time to 6-lane all of I-65.”

Ainsworth’s quest got a bolster last month when former President Donald Trump pledged adding more lanes to I-65 on his “first day” in the White House if he is elected in 2024.

Ainsworth’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. He has criticized the Alabama Department of Transportation for prioritizing the West Alabama Highway project “with less than 1/20th of the traffic count” than I-65.

Said Maddox, “I think most of the public in Alabama has been stuck on I-65. When you have that happen to you, you are like, ‘yes, (widening I-65) needs to happen. And it does. But we wanted to make sure the case for 43 got told to the public as well. Most people in Alabama do not come down 43. It’s not accessible. But it can be a corridor for economic opportunity and have benefits for our state. Let’s grow the economy here in West Alabama and the 43 project does that.”

Five decades

Maddox, who opposed Ivey in the 2018 governor’s race, praised the Ivey administration for prioritizing the project.

Ivey, who was in Linden in 2021 to break ground on the project, has previously said that Ainsworth’s criticism of the project — while pushing for additional lanes on I-65 — “makes for easy headlines.”

Other lawmakers praised the governor for her support of the project, including Day. He said that every major candidate for Alabama governor since the late 1950s has pushed for a rural West Alabama corridor. He said that Ivey is the only governor to make it happen.

“Governor Ivey, in my opinion, when she announced this initiative, she was doing so in a way to lift up this region,” Day said. “To lift up West Alabama from the Shoals to Mobile. She wasn’t trying to bring us to the front of the table. In my opinion, she was finally giving us a seat at the table. We don’t have to be driving the bus but to be on the bus. For the last 67 years, we were not given that opportunity.”

Elliott argues that there is a reason why the other previous governors did not prioritize the project despite showing initial support.

“Five decades of governors moving it down on the priority list is due to pressing needs (elsewhere in the state),” Elliott said. “We have limited resources. You can’t just have everything.”