Wriston reflects on Roads to Prosperity – WV MetroNews

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A number of high profile road projects in West Virginia are winding down in the final months of Gov. Jim Justice’s Roads to Prosperity Program.

The program was launched soon after the start of Justice’s first term. Voters approved a statewide bond to move forward on highway work in many cases which had been talked about for years, but never pushed off the drawing board.

State Transportation Secretary Jimmy Wriston, talked about the progress in a recent episode of the Department of Transportation’s “WV On the Dot” Podcast. Wriston said the Justice Administration made those long delayed projects a priority.

“We were able to take projects which just lingered and lingered and lingered forever and actually get them under contract and get them to construction,” he explained.

One of those projects was widening I-64 to six lanes between Nitro and Teays Valley. The project included construction of an entirely new interstate bridge over the Kanawha River and retrofitting the existing span with a new deck to match. In fact, Wriston said it was several projects molded into one because of many other smaller bridges and overpasses which needed to be built in the stretch. The project is in the final stages and should be finished in just a few weeks.

“What a project and how many decades would it have taken to do that? We know because it’s taken decades to do it,” he said

Other projects which had been on the drawing board for years are now reality. The Wheeling Bridges project was one of the first under the plan. It rebuilt and renovated every bridge heading into Wheeling on I-70 east of the Wheeling Tunnel. There’s a new exit being added at Culloden at the Putnam-Cabell County Line, the Scott Miller Hill Bypass in Roane County was recently completed and is another of those projects.

“The travelling public may think, ‘My gosh they’ve been doing this forever,’” said Wriston. “But you know what, if you’re going to bake a cake, you’ve got to break some eggs and we’ve been breaking some eggs out here.”

According to Wriston, Roads to Prosperity is aptly named. With each ribbon cutting private development followed. He said that was the idea.

“They were coming anyway and we’ve got to accommodate them. If you build it, they will come and if you maintain it, when they get here they’ll stay,” said Wriston.