Tuscaloosa Officials Urge Ivey to Get ALDOT to Leave “Critical” Road Open

The city council in Tuscaloosa is going directly to the woman in charge, urging Governor Kay Ivey to help them convince the Alabama Department of Transportation to leave open an access road they plan to permanently close.

As the Thread first reported, ALDOT is using $100 million secured by outgoing US Senator Richard Shelby to six-lane the Woolsey Finnell Bridge, which takes McFarland Boulevard over the Black Warrior River.

The state agency held a series of public interest meetings about the project this year and have presented preliminary plans for the project, but the city council, mayor Walt Maddox and other city leaders have serious issues with the proposal.

There are concerns about the bridge's aesthetics, how it will connect Tuscaloosa Riverwalk to the Northern Riverwalk and more, but the most pressing problem is ALDOT's proposal to permanently close and demolish the access road connecting McFarland and Julia Tutwiler Drive before you get to the bridge.

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This humble stretch of road provides motorists a direct route from McFarland to Baumhower's Victory Grill, the Tuscaloosa Magnet Schools, PopStroke, a hotel, a church and more.

ALDOT proposes closing and demolishing the connection when they widen the bridge over the next several years, eliminating that direct access. Getting to those businesses and institutions would then require a driver to exit on either Campus Drive or University Boulevard and take a longer route to get there.

In meetings about the matter, city leaders have said that will increase emergency response times to the area, when minutes matter. It will stymie business at the existing establishments and completely discourage future development on still-vacant land in the area, they said.

City staff has also said in meetings that the local ALDOT engineers who live and work in the Tuscaloosa area do not support closing this portion of road, but planners in Montgomery have not yet altered their proposed plans.

After two discussions about problems with the project, the seven-member city council voted Tuesday to adopt a resolution in support of leaving the road alone amd sending directly to Ivey, ALDOT director John Cooper, all regional state legislators and our Congressional delegation to Washington DC.

In their resolution, the council notes that the access road has been open since 1988 and the flourishing business there is only possible because of that road.

"Julia Tutwiler Drive provides a critical connection to schools, churches, businesses and a multitude of medical services providers as well as to the City's main water treatment plant and undeveloped land ripe for commercial development thanks to the connection to McFarland Boulevard," they wrote. "Terminating this ingress and egress from McFarland Boulevard will slow public safety responses to a school, critical infrastructure, and numerous businesses, inconvenience citizens, hinder economic development, lead to increased traffic volumes on smaller surface streets surrounding an elementary school, and remove access used daily by commuters, shoppers and parents."

The letter goes on to urge ALDOT to amend their plans and keep access to the road open.

The resolution was adopted Tuesday evening and will be sent to those leaders listed above in hopes they can advocate on the city's behalf and slow this process down long enough for more and better planning.

"This is extremely crucial to our city that this design not stay the way it is," council president Kip Tyner said Tuesday night. "I cannot tell you how damaging it would be for our future economy, future growth and public safety."

Tyner and the council also asked citizens to call and email Ivey's office themselves and speak out against ALDOT's current plan.

"Please, Tuscaloosa, step up and help us because that exit needs to stay," he said before the measure passed unanimously.

For updates on the situation as they develop, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.