At the end of January, the Engineering & Public Works Roadshow made a stop in Frankfort, Kentucky, to spotlight the Mountain Parkway Expansion, a sweeping infrastructure project designed to improve transportation and connectivity between eastern Kentucky and other parts of the state.
The event brought together Gov. Andy Beshear; Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Secretary Jim Gray; Federal Highway Administration Kentucky Administrator Todd Jeter; state elected officials; ACEC-KY Executive Director Russell Romine; and leaders from the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC), the American Public Works Association (APWA), and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
The Engineering & Public Works Roadshow is a partnership of ACEC, APWA, and ASCE, which have joined together to shine a spotlight on what successful infrastructure investment means for the nation’s economy, jobs, the environment, and our future.
With decades-long connections to political leaders in Kentucky and representing the ACEC-KY member firms that designed the project, Romine secured participation by Beshear and Gray in the Roadshow event and connected their staffs with the Roadshow leaders in Washington, D.C., to help bring the event to fruition.
The Mountain Parkway Expansion project will improve safety by modernizing the roads, creating safer interchanges to give drivers more time to merge, and eliminating dangerous curves around the mountain. The project will widen the existing two-lane highway to a four-lane highway, making it safer and more efficient to move people, goods, and services throughout the state. Now more than 70 percent completed, the second-to-last segment of the project is expected to be finished in 2027. Beshear has publicly called for completion of the project by the end of his second term in December 2028.
“This event is a celebration for engineers and public works excellence as we spotlight the Mountain Parkway Expansion and the investments being made for safer travel and generational economic development for the Commonwealth,” said Romine. “The Roadshow partnership is a national effort dedicated to the celebration of transformational engineering examples showcasing what can happen when federal and state governments work together to fund improvements in our most critical infrastructure.”
Roadshow organization member firms that have been involved with this project include Qk4; HMB Professional Engineers; Stantec; HDR Strand Associates; American Engineers, Inc.; EA Partners; JMT (formerly Vaughn & Melton); HW Lochner; WSP; and Palmer Engineering, which is serving as lead designer for the design-build team on the final segment of the project.
“We are the generation that is delivering on this decades-old promise,” said Beshear, “and the Mountain Parkway Expansion wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work of our folks in the engineering and public works sectors.”