A contractor for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) plans to close KY 80 where it crosses the Julian Carroll-Purchase Parkway at Mayfield in Graves County starting Tuesday, March 1. There will be a 4 month detour on KY 80 to allow the existing overpass to be demolished and reconstructed. KYTC's Keith Todd says work also begins on the Calvert City interchange Monday.
“When economic development officials say go to Japan or Europe to try to recruit businesses to locate here or build new manufacturing facilities here usually they’ll have a check list and they’ll say, are you on an interstate highway? Yes or no?” Todd said.
Todd says if you look at a map of Kentucky and look at counties with the highest per capita income and then take that map and you superimpose it over the counties that have an interstate or parkway, they’re the same map. He says that indicates the power of transportation within the economic development community.
“Several years ago the Kentucky Commerce cabinet put out some numbers that indicated that something like 95 percent of all new jobs in Kentucky that had been created over I think it was about a 5 year period. Were created within 5 miles of an interstate or parkway,” Todd said.
The average vehicles per day at the Mayfield I-69 interchange is 14,786. The I-24 interchange at Calvert City sees an average of 17,210 vehicles per day.
Todd recalls attending a meeting about 24 years ago about the potential for Interstate-69 to go through western Kentucky.
