How ALDOT Controls City Streets

If you're expecting any kind of erudite treatise on how the Alabama Department of Transportation works...well, you aren't going to get it here. After glancing at the ALDOT site and speaking with some who have dealt with that organization, we'll just call it the octopus.

The bottom line is money. If any city or county wants road or street work done, they must get money from ALDOT to do it. Except...well, there seem to be some county roads that are exceptions, but after our short study of how ALDOT works, we're still not prepared to explain why that is so.

What we are going to talk about is ALDOT and the proposed East Florence roundabout. Why does the City of Florence have to get approval from ALDOT? Again, the bottom line is money. That's why ALDOT could put the kibosh on much of the proposed College Street work. Will it do the same to the roundabout?

The roundabout is number seven on a current list of ALDOT projects in Lauderdale County. We're guessing this a chronological ranking, as in there are six projects older than the roundabout that are still in the works. That wouldn't necessarily mean the other six would come first due to some kind of perverse logic.

The anticipated total cost of the project is $1,567,000.00. Of that amount, the federal government is listed as providing 1,254,000.00; we assume the ALDOT doles out the funds as needed. The state and "other" are on the hook for 313,000.00. Is "other" the City of Florence? We assume it is, but have no concrete knowledge of how that works. 

So, the roundabout is no little weekend project, and ALDOT will control just how it's built...or if it's built at all. Could ALDOT decide, like some of the College Street project, that the roundabout really isn't needed, or isn't needed just yet. We assume it could. 

Do we all hear Alvin Holmes chanting, "What's wrong with the intersection we got?"

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Considered second to only Christopher Lee in the Hammer pantheon of villains, Ralph Bates was the great-nephew of Dr. Louis Pasteur. Sadly, he died at age 51 of pancreatic cancer: