March 15, 2024 - Seven million dollars in federal funding sought this year for the Virginia Coalfields Expressway has been included in budget bills recently signed into law by President Joe Biden, the Virginia Coalfields Expressway Authority announced Wednesday.

Money for the highway project was sought with help from U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., said Virginia CFX Authority Executive Director Jonathan Belcher.

The senators said the $7 million for the Virginia Department of Transportation will be used to add lanes — an expansion from a two-lane highway to a four-lane highway to the 2.74-mile Poplar Creek Phase A section and the 2.07-mile Poplar Creek Phase B section of U.S. 121/460 within Corridor Q and the Coalfields Expressway in Buchanan County, Va.

The Coalfields Expressway breaks at Southern Gap, Va.

courtesy photo

The Buchanan County Board of Supervisors voted earlier this week to advance the approval of the 20 percent match funding required to receive the federal funding, Belcher said.

The board voted to allocate $1.75 million in coal road funds to the project and to set the required coal road committee meeting and a public hearing for final approval of the match funds. The board voted last year to provide the match when the funds were being requested.

“With the $1.75 million match from Buchanan County, this will allow for the four-laning of the Coalfields Expressway from the town of Grundy to Southern Gap, where it joins the first section already four-laned with the funds the CFX Authority obtained last year for Southern Gap to Route 609,” Belcher said. “Effectively, this now means that except for a couple miles near the Breaks, US 460/121 (CFX) will now be a four-lane from Kentucky to the town of Grundy.”

“Without the work of the CFX Authority and our federal legislators, this would only have been a two-lane with a few truck climbing lanes,” Belcher said. “We appreciate the work of Congressman Griffith and Senators Warner and Kaine to secure the latest round of $7 million in federal funding to continue to advance the Coalfields Expressway project in Virginia. This is a significant accomplishment for the future of Buchanan and surrounding counties on the expressway route and we look forward to continuing to work with VDOT and our local, state and federal government officials to continue to advance this project.”

As part of the fiscal year 2024 appropriations process, members of Congress worked with the communities they represent to request funding for local community projects, otherwise known as earmarks.

This process allows Congress to dedicate federal funding for specific projects in Virginia, he said. The CFX funding was part of the $148 million for community projects across the Commonwealth federal legislators worked to secure.

The Virginia CFX project will improve road safety, reduce travel times, open the region to economic development and interstate commerce and connect the region with additional access to health care, Belcher said.

The Virginia Coalfields Expressway Authority was formed by the Virginia General Assembly in 2017 to improve the transportation into, from, within and through southwest Virginia; to assist in regional economic development; and to generally enhance highway safety in the affected localities of southwest Virginia.

The Coalfields Expressway, designated as U.S. 121 and a Congressional High Priority Corridor, is a proposed limited-access highway to provide a modern, safe and efficient transportation artery through the coalfields region of far southwest Virginia and southern West Virginia.

The Virginia stretch of the Coalfields Expressway is not to be confused with the West Virginia section of the roadway, which remains under construction in McDowell and Wyoming counties. A section of the Coalfields Expressway is open to traffic in Raleigh County.

Construction began in the summer of 2022 on a five-mile section of the Coalfields Expressway in McDowell County between Welch and the planned W.Va. 16 intersection with the King Coal Highway in Wyoming County. The nearly $150 million project is slated to be finished in 2026 and will be McDowell County’s first four-lane highway.