Special Report: The Road to Nowhere

MOBILE COUNTY, Ala. (WALA) - THE ROAD TO NOWHERE

From the Mississippi state line to I-65, the new Highway 98 was meant to replace a road with a vicious reputation. But about halfway through, the project came to a screeching halt and for two years not a single shovel of dirt has been tossed.

Let's start with the problem - the old Highway 98. From the state line to Semmes it's two narrow lanes, with never-ending, fast-moving traffic.

"I can sit on my front porch and in ten minutes count twenty 18-wheelers. Seven or eight in a row," John Roper, who has lived on Highway 98 for more than 40 years, said.

Roper said he cringes every time he hears sirens.

"People getting killed," Roper exclaimed. "I tell you what, you go through the records and see how many people have been killed on 98 out here."

MORE THAN 50 DEAD

According to the Alabama Department of Transportation, there have been 53 deaths on Highway 98 in Western Mobile County since 1995.

Over the years, FOX10's cameras have documented a number of horrendous wrecks on the road. Lives lost in an instant. The highway takes such a toll it's earned a grisly nickname: Bloody 98.

There's even song, called Bloody 98, by a band called Blue Mountain, about the road.

Volunteer Firefighter Kery Evans is all too aware of the road's reputation.

"Forty years ago it got the name bloody 98 because it's one of the bloodiest highways in the state of Alabama. We don't hear it as much as we used to, but we still work a lot of accidents out here," he said.

Evans has been to many accidents along Highway 98 over the years and he's seen the road at it's worst.

"We've seen some pretty bad things," Evans said as he shook his head. "A lot of fatalities, a lot of injured people."

Not long after we talked to Evans, he got a call. Two cars crushed by a wide-load 18-wheeler near the state line. This time, no serious injuries, but a case in point about what makes Highway 98 so dangerous.

"Lives are precious, we need to do what we can to help save lives," Evans said.

THE SOLUTION... DELAYED

The solution was a brand-new highway stretching from the state line to I-65, built with millions in taxpayer money.

Eight miles of the road at the western end cuts through scenic, rolling hills, where the land has been cleared and the bed has been laid. Then there's four more miles of uncleared land, followed by a completed four-lane segment from Schillinger Road to I-65.

But the piece-meal, incomplete route is as far as the road ever got. Design problems and a lawsuit have left the new Highway 98 at a standstill for more than two years.

"If they had simply widened the existing road they would have fixed and solved the Bloody 98 problem for about $60 million, and now were looking at a roadway in it's entirety that's going to cost well over $100 million," Casi Calloway with Mobile Baykeepers said.

Calloway and Mobile Baykeepers filed the lawsuit over the Highway because of eroding sediment entering Big Creek Lake… which happens to be the water supply for Mobile. The lawsuit was settled in May of last year. It forced the Alabama Department of Transportation engineers to go back to the drawing board and redesign large portions of the road.

DOT REWORKS PROJECT

"We're optimistic that we can have plans finished by the end of this year, and then it's just a matter of looking at our federal funding situation to schedule construction to move forward," Alabama DOT spokesperson Tony Harris said.

Harris is frank about the problems the project has faced.

"We had construction issues, storm water runoff issues and then lawsuits that have cost us some time on this project," Harris told us. "We're trying to move past that now."

He said the new designs will add more bridges to span wetlands, and hills won't be carved so severely. It will also be limited access. This will help the new road have less of an adverse environmental impact.

The lawsuit has changed how the DOT looks at this project and many others.

"One thing that has come out of the problems we've had on this project is a closer relationship with environmental groups. Those are natural partners and stakeholders in everything that we do, and despite having some problems in construction, we've worked through this project to improve our relationship with those groups and strengthen our partnership with those groups. That's good for us, for them and everyone we serve," Harris said.

"Hate that we had to file a lawsuit to make them do that in the first place, but we really think they got the message and they're not going to let projects go forward at that level, that bad, in the future," Calloway added.

All the problems mean that the new Highway 98 won't be completed for another four or five years. That's twelve years from when the project was started. In the mean time, that leaves the old 98, and its grisly reputation, as the only alternative.

The DOT won't make a cost estimate on the project until the final design is complete. Federal funds will cover 80 percent of the cost.