Roundabouts added to bypass extension plan

When the exten­sion of Veterans Memorial Parkway (also known as the east­ern bypass) is com­plet­ed, it will include three round­abouts and a realign­ment of Boonesboro Road with the exist­ing Bypass Road (west­ern bypass) to facil­i­tate traf­fic between I‑64 and Boonesboro.

Both of these design ele­ments rep­re­sent changes to the orig­i­nal plan and are designed to facil­i­tate traf­fic flow.

WinCity Voices obtained a Google Earth file con­tain­ing details of the updat­ed plan last week, along with com­ments from Rob Sprague, the project manager.

Sprague told WinCity Voices in an email that the updat­ed plan “includes round­abouts at Two Mile Road and Muddy Creek Road. We have also decid­ed to con­struct a round­about at the east end of the project at KY 89 (East Washington Street/Irvine Road).”

Drivers turn­ing from Boonesboro Road onto Bypass Road, and vice ver­sa, will see a new align­ment that makes the tran­si­tion much smoother.

“Southbound KY 627 (Boonesboro Road) will include two through lanes and two left-turn lanes at the inter­sec­tion with the new bypass,” Sprague wrote. “Northbound KY 627 will also pro­vide two through lanes from the bypass.

“Westbound traf­fic on the bypass will be accom­mo­dat­ed by a free-flow right-turn lane that bypass­es the inter­sec­tion and merges into north­bound KY 627.”

The project is behind sched­ule, accord­ing to doc­u­ments on the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet web­site. The ini­tial study for the project was released in January 2004. A 2022 project newslet­ter includ­ed a time­line in which right-of-way acqui­si­tion would have been com­plet­ed by the end of 2025, and con­struc­tion was to begin this year. But none of that has happened.

“We are cur­rent­ly work­ing to reau­tho­rize the state funds that were approved sev­er­al years ago for right-of-way acqui­si­tion and util­i­ty relo­ca­tions using fed­er­al fund­ing,” Sprague wrote in his email.

WinCity Voices has reached out to state Sen. Greg Elkins and state Rep. Ryan Dotson for an update on fund­ing, but as of this writ­ing, has received no response. The leg­is­la­ture is cur­rent­ly in session.

The ini­tial plan called for the bypass exten­sion to be a four-lane divid­ed high­way, match­ing the exist­ing road—presumably with stop­lights at the inter­sec­tions. However, the new plan describes a two-lane road with round­abouts at the key inter­sec­tions. Replacing stop­lights with round­abouts at low-vol­ume inter­sec­tions should allow traf­fic on the bypass to flow more smoothly.

In antic­i­pa­tion of the project’s com­ple­tion, new devel­op­ment is under­way near the ter­mi­nus of the bypass exten­sion at Boonesboro Road, includ­ing Boone’s Crossing, which may fea­ture up to 400 res­i­dences and retail space.

The city of Winchester is also plan­ning to install a round­about — which will be the city’s first — at the inter­sec­tion of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Shoppers Drive, adja­cent to the school com­plex. City lead­ers told WinCity Voices in November that they expect that to hap­pen this sum­mer, along with a bridge replace­ment at the MLK Drive inter­sec­tion with Bypass Road.

The Google Earth file ref­er­enced in this arti­cle can be down­loaded here: https://www.wincityvoices.org/bypassfile. To view the file, you will need to have Google Earth installed on your com­put­er or tablet. You can get it here: https://www.google.com/earth/about/versions/