West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) dismissed Secretary of Transportation Tom Smith on March 10 in an apparent dispute over the use of funds from a $1.6-billion bond issue endorsed by the state’s voters in October 2017.
An eight-mile widening of the West Virginia Turnpike near Beckley will be the first project to receive funding from the $1.6 billion bond program approved in a November 2016 referendum.
Fresh off a resounding endorsement of a $1.6 billion road bond referendum, West Virginia transportation officials are now strategizing how those funds, along with other recently approved revenue sources, will be put to work.
More than 900 West Virginia highway and bridge projects are in line to receive funding from a $1.6 billion bond proposal that goes before the state’s voters on October 7. The bonds are part of a $2.8 billion transportation funding initiative proposed earlier this year by Gov. Jim Justice (R).
The failure of the world’s largest engineered slope a year ago at Charleston’s Yeager Airport has generated widespread speculation from the international engineering community because of the scale of construction and the numerous prizes for design the project had garnered, says Chrys Steiakakis, a geotechnical engineer at Geosysta Ltd., Attiki, Greece.