The Yavapai County Board of Supervisors approved an intergovernmental agreement on Jan. 20 between the county and the Arizona Department of Transportation for safety- related road improvements on Cornville Road.
The total cost of the project is $4,067,282, with $231,835 coming from the county, and ADOT’s portion being paid by the Federal Highway Administration’s Highway Safety Improvement Program.
The vote was unanimous, and the agreement was passed as part of the consent agenda, with no discussion of the details of the project by the supervisors.
“The safety improvement work proposed under this Agreement consists of the design and installation of rumble strips and construction of shoulder widening on Cornville Road to include:
- “Installation of center- line rumble strips east of Tissaw Road for approximately 2 miles to about 1,200 feet west of Chick Road, and
- “Installation of centerline rumble strips and shoulder widening to 5 feet with shoulder rumble strips for approximately 1.6 miles east beginning at Solair Drive going approximately 3 miles to the inter- section of Beaverhead Flat Road,” Yavapai County Public Works wrote in its description of the project for the BOS.
“The improvements will improve safety for pulling off the shoulder of the roadway and rumble strips alerting drivers they not staying within their lane of traffic,” Yavapai County District 2 Supervisor James Gregory, in whose district the improvements will be, wrote in an email. “In the future I would like to see additional improvements such as adding additional lanes north of Cornville and improving traffic flow at the Cornville Road and [State Route] 89A.”
According to Assistant Public Works Director Roger McCormick, the county’s proposal was one of 46 projects chosen in 2018 by ADOT to receive HSIP funding, out of 61 proposed. The projects were required to meet a certain level of cost-benefit analysis — how many accidents could be expected to be averted compared to the cost of the project — in order to be approved.
“Any time you have a road with higher traffic numbers, like Cornville Road does, you’re going to have higher traffic incidents,” McCormick said. “The idea is to improve the road where there is more traffic.”
According to McCormick, design for the road improvements is expected to begin in late spring, with the actual construction likely to begin in early 2022.
