The impact to traffic will be the topic when the public is invited to offer opinions on extending South Frontage Road past its current stopping point at Old Highway 27.

Results of an environmental study will be presented at a hearing Feb. 13 at Vicksburg Convention Center. Officials with the Mississippi Department of Transportation will be on hand.

The hearing is one of the first definitive steps toward actually designing and constructing a way over or across railroad tracks to join South Frontage from near Watkins’ Nursery to near Vicksburg Factory Outlets.

Economic development and city officials have made the issue a top talking point for more than a decade, including on annual treks to Washington to serve as lobbyists for the community.

The persistence paid off in 2005 when Congress appropriated $2.5 million to pay for the study, which has been conducted by the Neel-Shafer engineering firm. Such studies are required preliminaries to seeking design and construction funds.

&#8220We need good, functioning frontage roads in this community,” said Margaret Gilmer, general manager of Vicksburg Factory Outlets, a member of the commerce and retail councils within the Vicksburg Warren Community Alliance for many of those trips.

While an overpass is one option, MDOT could settle on a gated grade crossing of the tracks, which would be far less expensive.

Interstate 20 and North Frontage Road already have bridges over the tracks in the area.

MDOT officials also have &#8220no-build” as an option, invoked if a cost-benefit ratio is out of proportion, there is insufficient traffic or some other combination of factors weighs against a project.

Gilmer said she would prefer a bridge there, saying it would connect the commercial corridor along South Frontage and make it whole.

&#8220The at-grade crossing is not an option,” Gilmer said.

Other businesses on the east side of the tracks are Cracker Barrel Country Store, Jameson Inn and Holiday Inn Express. Without an entrance from South Frontage, all traffic to the shopping area enters from East Clay Street.

Long-range plans are still in the works to widen Interstate 20 through Vicksburg, including some type of revamp to overpasses and both frontage roads.

Those projects are dependent on funding and are said to be years away from realization.