Decades-long road construction on U.S. 82 in Prattville, Ala., faces delays into the New Year. Started in late '50s, the project has caused congestion, impacting daily life and college football traffic routes. Completion remains uncertain due to pending work like guardrail installations and asphalt laying.
Shutterstock photo/J.D.S.
Area drivers around Prattville, Ala., continue to endure a long-running road construction project on one of the city's main thoroughfares.
The work to complete the four-lane U.S. Highway 82 through the city, located northwest of Montgomery, has developed into a decades-long drama.
The average daily traffic count near the project area rose from 10,990 in 2013 to 18,893 in 2019, according to figures from the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT). The highway serves as both the bypass for Prattville and a designated truck route.
There has been construction along about an 8-mi. section of the roadway from U.S. 31 to Fourth Street in some form or another for about the past 10 years.
"There are children in this city that are in third and fourth grades [and] all they've seen their whole lives is orange construction barrels and work being done out on [U.S.] 82," Terry Lester, a Prattville resident, told the Montgomery Advertiser. "Don't get me wrong, the work needed to be done — Lord knows the work needed to be done. But it's been a pain too, [because it has been] going on as long as it has."
Calls for Updating U.S. 82 First Began in Late ‘50s
The effort to widen the final stretch of highway to four lanes kicked off in 2021 with the building of two new bridges and a new roadbed. That work was just winding down when another project started in 2023 to replace the two bridges on an older section of the route.
The orange construction barrels were not even moved off site before the most recent work began, the Advertiser reported. Other work will include the creation of dual left-turn lanes and traffic signal realignments on northbound U.S. 31 to westbound U.S. 82.
The final phase of the highway projects appears to be winding down, but the Montgomery news source cautioned that no one should begin celebrating just yet. Although major work is done, no completion date has been set, said Brantley Kirk, an ALDOT spokesperson.
Guardrails still must be installed, she said, along with median work and the final layer of asphalt in some stretches. Weather always plays a role when dirt is being moved, but especially so in asphalt work, according to Kirk. Additionally, lower winter temperatures can mean that on some days it is simply just too cold to lay asphalt.
Not only has local traffic been affected by the delayed completion of the U.S. 82 project, but college gridiron fans also have felt the pain of congested traffic due to its construction. On Saturdays during football season, the road fills with traffic for the University of Alabama home football games, which has led to U.S. 82 becoming known as "University Highway" because it is a popular route to Tuscaloosa.
The effort to convert the road from two to four lanes goes back at least to the late 1950s, the Advertiser noted. In 1957 the Prattville Progress published an editorial imploring ALDOT (then known as the Highway Department) to four-lane the highway for safety and economic development concerns.
At that time, Prattville had a population of about 4,000 people. Since then, it has grown ten-fold, and now can boast that its current estimated population is approximately 40,000
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