I've talked about planes before in The Pine Belt News, particularly my love for our own Pine Belt Regional Airport. That conversation was all about us getting out of town. But today, I'd like to cover trains and automobiles and how we get---around town. After all, on the average day, that’s a lot more important to most of us. Let's begin with the trains and, in Hattiesburg, how they and automobiles can create a little dance of frustration all their own.
I'm excited to see the roadway changes that are making travel in our city easier. That begins with the newly opened Hall Avenue overpass, spanning the dreaded Canadian National (CN) Railroad crossing at Edwards Street. If you haven’t crossed or seen that new overpass, it’s worth a drive. Tastefully designed, it features Hub City signs memorializing the giant one that once adorned the Ross Building, now the America Building, in downtown Hattiesburg. Gracing the bridge's summit, the signs pay homage to our city's transportation history. Hattiesburg was born as a railway town, and our central location to a number of other cities in the Gulf South earned us our nickname, the Hub City.
But for those of us who drive Hattiesburg’s streets, the trains that crisscross the city have historically dictated how efficiently we get around town. Take the CN rail line between Mobile and Hattiesburg. As it runs through town at Southern Avenue, Walnut Street and Pine Street, it slices a line between east and west Hattiesburg. That rail line is notorious for making cross-town travel a pain. If that’s a regular route for you, then you know what I mean.
As the train creeps through Hattiesburg at a snail’s pace, it’s also known to stop completely. And not just for a couple of minutes. I’ve seen that train sitting for as long as 15 minutes. But wait, sometimes worse than that, after stopping, it may decide to reverse, going in the opposite direction. Like me, you’ve probably sat in your car fuming as your blood pressure ticked up when this happens. To this day, I wonder what they're doing on one end of the train to make it stop or even reverse. Are they waiting for traffic to cross on another line? And what about those emergency vehicles attempting to get from the east side, or from Petal, to one of the hospitals on Hattiesburg’s west side? No matter the reason, you’re stuck until the train decides to start moving again.
Speaking of Petal, for those residents whose jobs are across the Leaf River in Hattiesburg, I’ve always wondered if timing the trains was a necessity for them, in order to get to work on time. Well, hallelujah for Petal! The new Hall Avenue overpass gives our friends across the river uninterrupted automobile access to Hattiesburg, no matter the train's schedule.
Then there’s that other rail line that handles both freight traffic and Amtrak passengers traveling between New Orleans and Atlanta. Thankfully, trains on that line move at a faster clip, but they can also be very long. The only plus is that if you’re stuck, you might as well take advantage and check your text messages. Even for that rail line though, help is on the way.
After crossing the new overpass, continue on Hall Avenue to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, where a second overpass will soon open to vehicles and pedestrians. Both overpasses, thoughtfully, include sidewalks. This one will carry you over the Amtrak line, depositing you onto Pine Street, where Broadway Drive begins. Together, these two new overpasses provide a direct path between Petal and Hattiesburg without the headache of trains disrupting your trip. The city expects the second overpass to open to traffic by the first week of May.
There may be even more good news in the mix. Since Hattiesburg’s new car dealers have vacated south Hattiesburg and Broadway Drive en masse, their empty showrooms have contributed to urban blight in what used to be two of our city’s busiest commercial corridors. With the creation of a new direct gateway between Petal and Hattiesburg, more traffic should be generated for southeast Hattiesburg. The hope is this will spur commercial development along Broadway Drive and the western end of Pine Street. Now that’s what I'd call progress.
Speaking of progress, let’s move past the trains and on to automobiles, our primary way of getting around town. Once you cross the new overpass at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, the bridge puts you at the beginning of Broadway Drive, which is part of U.S. Highway 11. Before the Interstate Highway System, Highway 11 was the route to New Orleans, a two-lane highway all the way. Today, Interstate 59 makes for an easy drive to the Crescent City, with Broadway Drive/Highway 11 connecting you to I-59 for your nonstop trip to New Orleans.
You may have heard there are plans to expand the Highway 11/I-59 interchange to improve traffic flow. But this decision is a bit of a head-scratcher for me. Oh, don’t get me wrong—I’m all for upgrading the interchange. But here’s the curious part: drive a few miles north on I-59 past the Hardy Street interchange to where it merges with U.S. 49 merger. It seems the southern entrance to Hattiesburg at I-59 was prioritized over the northern entrance. Surely, the volume of traffic is higher at Hattiesburg’s northern gateway.
Navigating the I-59/U.S. 49 interchange is sometimes a nail-biting proposition, like when you’re heading north on U.S. 49 and merging onto I-59 south. Talk about a white-knuckler! The transition lane is woefully short, giving you what feels like a couple of microseconds to merge with 70 mph traffic bound for New Orleans. The transition may have been fine when the interchange was constructed in the 1960s, but Hattiesburg has doubled in size since then, with metro Hattiesburg having a population of more than 150,000. The I-59/U.S. 49 interchange is no longer designed to handle the daily volume of traffic passing through it. Let's hope the Mississippi Department of Transportation is already focusing on the future of that interchange.
