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Vol. XXVIII • No. 1
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Placing 100-ft. beams across the width of the highway must be done with great precision.
By Cindy Riley
Known for its rush hour congestion and high accident rates, Highway 280 is recognized as one of Alabama’s busiest non-interstate roadways. To ease the burden of motorists traveling the popular retail corridor, the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) is widening a section of the roadway from three to four lanes in each direction, increasing the overall capacity by 30 percent. “There are backups throughout a large portion of the day,” said DeJarvis Leonard, ALDOT east central region engineer. “The average daily traffic of U.S. 280 in this location is over 120,000. The widening of this route will largely help daily
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commuters but also will be beneficial for those traveling to and from Birmingham.” The $53 million undertaking begins in the city of Homewood at Hollywood Boulevard and ends at I-459 in the city of Birmingham. The distance is approximately 4 mi. “This section is extremely busy for daily commuters traveling to and from Birmingham, local traffic and also traffic from elsewhere passing through the city,” said Leonard. “Traffic has primarily been affected by nightly lane closures.” The contractor, APAC-Alabama Inc., has overseen similar projects in the area for decades. It was involved in the past two major widening efforts on U.S. 280 in the past 20 years in the same location. One of the highlights of this latest proj-
ect involves replacing the bridge on Pump House Road, which forced a major traffic shutdown in November. “Completely closing all lanes of U.S. 280 eastbound from Friday night until Sunday afternoon was very significant,” said Leonard. “ALDOT used multiple mechanisms to notify the public of the impending closure. “Signal timing was adjusted on alternate routes to aid in the flow of traffic,” he added. “The combined effort of all parties involved made the closure as minimal impact as possible, with very little queuing or congestion on nearby routes. The contractor was able to end the closure about 12 hours earlier than allowed.” see ALDOT page 6