Construction to Resume On Birmingham’s

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey appeared in Gardendale on April 12 to announce that $489 million in federal funding has been secured to resume construction on the Birmingham Northern Beltline this spring.

The Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) broke ground on the project in 2014 but ceased work in 2016 due to a lack of funding from Washington. Al.com, the statewide news service, reported April 13 that the new funding will cover five years of construction and will open a four-lane, 10-mi. segment of highway called Interstate 422 between U.S. Highway 31, north of Gardendale, and Alabama Highway 75, north of Pinson.

“This is an exciting day for Jefferson County,” Ivey said. “The need for this project has grown.”

If completed as planned, the proposed Northern Beltline would be a 52-mi., sixlane corridor from I-59 in northeast Jefferson

County to the I-459 interchange with I-59/I20 near Bessemer.

When it was conceived, the project was to be financed solely by the Appalachian Development Highway System but was not funded in the fiscal year 2018 federal transportation bill.

The entire beltline was originally estimated to cost $3.4 billion, but the cost estimate rose in 2011 to $4.7 billion. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) now esti- mates the project will cost $5.44 billion, averaging over $100 million per mile of road, making it the most expensive road project in Alabama’s history.

Of the $489 million the state has secured to fund building the freeway for the next half-decade, over $300 million comes from President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, which Congress passed in 2021.

The new I-422 is intended to complete an