Plans to add lanes to Interstate 20 in Vicksburg, rebuild interchanges and consider making traffic along the frontage roads one-way will be presented Tuesday — the first step in a process sure to affect businesses and neighborhoods near the highway.  

In the talking phase for years, major reconstruction along the highway’s 17 miles between the Mississippi and Big Black rivers is now centered on a 6-mile stretch between the Washington Street/Warrenton Road exit and the U.S. 61 North/Mississippi 27 interchange near the city limits.

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The public meeting on design plans to reconstruct Interstate 20 through Vicksburg will be from 4 until 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Vicksburg Convention Center, upstairs meeting rooms 1 and 2.

Public comments will be factored into an ongoing environmental study conducted by Jackson-based Neel-Schaffer Inc. for the Mississippi Department of Transportation. State highway construction and environmental personnel will be joined by Federal Highway Administration officials at the session at the Vicksburg Convention Center.

“This is the very beginning of a long process,” Central District Commissioner Dick Hall said, adding the agency has settled on two options. Each would widen the highway to six lanes, three in each direction, and rebuild overpasses at Halls Ferry Road, Indiana Avenue, Clay Street and Wisconsin Avenue.

Hall said both frontage roads would be widened to three lanes at the project’s outset, then used as detours around sections of interstate highway as they are widened. One design would keep traffic westbound exclusively on North Frontage Road and eastbound on South Frontage Road, paralleling adjacent interstate lanes to allow for short access ramps to both. Lanes would shift back to two lanes in each direction beyond the study area. Environmental assessments are expected to last at least another year before a second session before the public is announced. Funding for the study has exceeded $5.5 million, with construction costs from federal allocations likely to cost in the tens of millions. Previously advanced plans to extend South Frontage Road across rail tracks to the Outlets at Vicksburg will be rolled into the overall reconstruction plan, Hall said.

“It’ll all have to mesh,” Hall said. “It’s all part of it.”

Acquiring rights of way from businesses that line the interstate on both sides is a strong possibility will be discussed during the Tuesday session that will dispense with formal presentations in favor of small group-type conversations with the department’s engineers and environmental specialists. A short video will be shown to demonstrate likely driving patterns during the work, Hall said.

Remodeled exits to replace the short, stubby ramps from Clay Street and tricky, lefthanded exits onto both parts of U.S. 61 — relics of design methods common when the highway opened in the 1960s — weigh heaviest with those who want to see better driving conditions.

“Six-laning would be fantastic,” said J.E. “Brother” Blackburn, second-generation owner of car dealerships bearing the family name that have grown into new digs on North Frontage Road in 2006.

While Blackburn admits a one-way frontage road system to mimic Interstate 55 in north Jackson would affect how people get to the dealership — and every bank, gas station and hotel on the frontage roads — the prospect of smoother driving conditions would serve a greater good, Blackburn said.

“I’ve thought a lot about this, on what is more critical,” Blackburn said. “Public safety has priority over individual businesses.”

Whether enough traffic rolls through Vicksburg on a daily basis remains a prime point of contention for other retailers who want traffic to move in both directions.

“I just think it would be a huge inconvenience for Vicksburgers to get from point A to point B,” said George Carr, whose General Motors dealership on South Frontage Road is bounded by a mix of undeveloped brush and residential neighborhoods. “Even the car dealerships in Jackson will tell you they wished traffic went both ways.”

Carr, who said about half of his business comes from outside Vicksburg, said the prospect of longer drives to get from place to place on the frontage roads doesn’t jibe with efforts by the government and other consumer advocates to encourage less driving.

“We just had Cash for Clunkers where the government spent $3 billion trying to get us to drive less,” Carr said. “I don’t see where we have the traffic congestion.”

Average daily traffic along Interstate 20 through Vicksburg is busiest between Indiana Avenue and Clay Street, about 52,000 vehicles daily, according to the most recent calculations by MDOT in 2007.

Maps for Hinds County traffic counts show up to 139,000 vehicles travel Interstate 55 daily in northeast Jackson. Four sections where MDOT tracked traffic totals west of the Washington Street exit and through Clay Street exit averaged 45,250 in 2007, up about 2,000 cars over a two-year span.

“It would have a horrible effect,” said Emmett Atwood, vice president of Atwood Chevrolet. “There’s no telling what percentage of business we’d lose.”

“It’s hard enough to get to us now,” said Jim Geary, general manager of Vicksburg Honda on North Frontage Road, adding customers coming from points west would be hard-pressed to reach him without passing it first, then driving back west on a made-over frontage road. “You can say I’d be against it.”

Work completed on the interstate in the past five years has included resurfacing, new light fixtures and a cabling system from the river to Clay Street to prevent vehicles from crossing the median.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com