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Originally Posted by bystander1
Exactly. The state needs to do everything it can to get those 18-wheelers off of 65 and 85. It's ridiculous the amount of trucks that are now hogging the interstates in the city. They will be required to use the "new" I-85 outer loop as the designated truck route. That will not take all of the "through traffic" trucks out of the city, but it will move enough of them to help traffic move better and safer.
After all, building the outer loop was part of the state's promise that Hyundai used to locate here. And I believe the state has only recently announced that it will finally live up to it's promise and restart the work on the outer loop because it was hurting their efforts to convince Hyundai to expand their manufacturing plant here. From Hyundai's standpoint: 'If you can't live up to your earlier promises for us to come here, what makes you think we can believe your new promises to expand here?'
Regardless of what happens with that, the state had no choice but to live up to it's obligations and restart the long-delayed highway.
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It's the double-edged sward of having a major manufacturing facility in the city. On the 1 hand, it's a huge economic boom(and considering the way those Sonatas and Elantras are selling, I don't see Hyundai letting up anytime soon).
On the other hand, Montgomery has to go the extra mile for certain infrastructure projects to handle the car plant. Mercedes and Honda don't have these issues because they are located well outside of urbanized cores and are right along the interstate. Hyundai's issue is that while it's located along I-65 on the southern end of Montgomery/Hope Hull, you now have all these suppliers setting up shop along I-85 between Montgomery, West Point, GA where the Kia plant is, and Atlanta. So suddenly you have a lot more medium distance travel along roughly 80-100 miles of interstate. This is direct contrast to Vance or Lincoln where the assembly plants are the hubs and the suppliers are located within very close distance(at least for the Tier I suppliers).
What Hyundai has done for East Alabama is incredible and will only continue to help those in the River Region. But in order to ease the city congestion and allow for easier transport of goods and products(Koreans have taken that just-in-time mentality that the Japanese made famous and raised it to the nth degree), the Outer Loop is going to have to be constructed.
What I hope is that there are limited access points along the loop(so as to gear it as a through route rather then add yet another commercial layer to the metro area) and that the development that does take place is more of the industrial form.
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