MORGANTOWN — In October 2023, when it was first announced that two sets of temporary traffic lights were likely coming to Chaplin Hill Road at I-79 Exit 155, members of the Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization Policy Board lauded the move as a necessary stop gap effort until the failing interchange could be fully addressed.
It was cautioned, however, that the installation likely wouldn’t occur until the first quarter of 2024.
That timeline was soon pushed back to fall 2024.
Then summer 2025.
And now?
“Since the project has not been bid, we don’t have a good estimation of when it will be constructed, though the WVDOH target was by the time WVU is back in session,” MMMPO Executive Director Bill Austin said Tuesday. “Meeting that target is highly unlikely.”
Austin said the expected delay is tied to a supply chain issue regarding the signal heads. Even so, he added, the DOH is treating the lights as a “high priority project.”
The lights are also a high priority for the MPO, and have been going back at least a year before DOH brass even confirmed they were coming.
The local commitment was reinforced in November, when the DOH said the MPO would need to chip in $750,000 in Carbon Reduction Program funds it receives for suballocation in order to get the lights in place before the influx of traffic this fall. The MPO Policy Board immediately voted to do so, though it now seems that timeline is slipping away.
According to the DOH, the lights will be full signal installations using wood poles “in order to eliminate the long lead time for steel support poles.” The project will consist of signals at both the I-79 northbound and southbound ramps along Chaplin Hill Road.
The lights have always carried the “temporary” tag as there is a major overhaul of Exit 155 that’s been looming somewhere out there for the better part of a decade at this point.
In 2019, the state said it was committing $66 million to the project.
In late 2023, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the interchange reconfiguration a $54.3 million Mega grant. That grant came with a fall 2028 obligation requirement – meaning there is a deadline looming.
The project as approved in the grant application includes new I-79 bridges over Chaplin Hill Road, a new divergent diamond interchange with a westbound flyover and a sidewalk/multipurpose path between The Gateway and the rail-trail on the far side of the Star City Bridge. It’s expected the project will also include improvements to reduce congestion at the University Town Centre/Chaplin Hill Road intersection and address Chaplin Hill Road east of I-79.
The estimated cost of the project was $110 million at the time of the grant award.
According to information provided to The Dominion Post, an announcement on the interchange reconfiguration project is “close.”
