MONTGOMERY — Relief is in sight for motorists traveling I-565.
You know the highway – it’s a parking lot some days, especially during rush hour.
Well, in a couple of years, those days will be a distant memory.
The Alabama Department of Transportation opened bids for the project to expand I-565 to six lanes from County Line Road to Wall Triana Highway in Madison.
Last month, Gov. Kay Ivey announced at the annual Alabama Update in Huntsville, “I’m proud to report that at the end of this month we are building the last five-mile section of Interstate 565.
“When it’s all said and done, all of I-565 will be six lanes across.”
Of four bidders, contractor Wiregrass Construction submitted the apparent low bid of $28,992,350. Bids were anticipated to be between $28 million and $34.2 million, ALDOT said in a news release.
Construction is pending bid review and award of the contract.
The project will stretch nearly five miles, from west of County Line Road in Limestone County to east of Wall Triana Highway in Madison. It includes adding a third lane on each roadway and widening two sets of bridges — at Bradford Creek just west of Exit 9 (Wall Triana Highway) and at Intergraph Way and the Norfolk Southern railroad just east of Exit 9 — to accommodate the additional lanes.
Widening will primarily take place to the inside of the existing roadways, where there is currently a grassy median.
Once begun, construction is anticipated to take about two years. After completion, I-565 will have a minimum of six lanes from I-65 to Memorial Parkway in Huntsville.
Nearly 70,000 vehicles travel this segment of I-565 daily, according to traffic counts.
A previous Rebuild Alabama project, completed in late 2021 expanded most of I-565 in Limestone County. The project added lanes on more than seven miles of I-565 from west of the I-65 interchange to west of County Line Road at a cost of more than $14 million.
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