BECKLEY, W.Va. — The 88-mile West Virginia Turnpike hasn’t seen the normal drop off of traffic this fall, according to West Virginia Parkways Authority Executive Director Jeff Miller.
“It (traffic) typically drops off after Labor Day and we have a slight increase over last year, roughly about a 4% increase in transactions,” Miller told MetroNews.
Last year was a strong year for traffic on the Turnpike coming after 2020 when travel went down significantly because of the pandemic.
The Parkways Authority is using the fall to get some maintenance work wrapped up before winter. Miller said a third bridge deck replacement project is being installed this week.
“It (the bridge deck) is pre-fabricated off-site, the contractor works 24/7. We’ve been fortunate the first two have been completed on schedule and the third one started Saturday night. We’re having some great weather right now so that’s really going to help us,” Miller said.
The Parkways Authority approved a bid this week to remove a half mile of brush and trees in a heavily dense area south of the I-77/I-64 split in Raleigh County. Miller said they want the trees removed before there are any icing problems. He said there will be some lane closures in the near future.
“We’ve seen a lot of traffic out there and we’ve done all that we can to always try and minimize the disruption to the traveling public and we’ve been able to perform a lot of good maintenance projects through the course of this as well,” Miller said.
Plans are still in the works to close the Beckley Travel Plaza in February as part of a rebuild and modernization of the Turnpike’s three travel plazas. There was a grease fire at the Burger King in the Beckley building in September. Miller said that restaurant will not reopen before the plaza’s scheduled closing. The rest of the Beckley plaza is open, Miller said.
“Because of the fact that the facility will be closing Feb. 1, we just felt that there was not really a need at this time to replace any of that equipment or do any of the work to it to reopen that,” Miller said.