Work to reduce Pinal traffic
Millions more needed to widen key highway
Work crews are starting to widen the Hunt Highway in Pinal County.
The project comes not a day too soon for traffic-weary San Tan Valley area residents.
But they will have to wait years for full relief.
The Hunt Highway connects Florence with Queen Creek and has been a thorn in the side of commuters.
The highway also has become a symbol of what happens when new subdivisions are built without planning for roads.
First came thousands of new homes after the Johnson Ranch subdivision opened, near the county line southeast of Chandler Heights. By midway through the past decade, the surrounding San Tan region was one of the fastest-growing in the nation.
With homes came people, and with people, vehicles. But roads weren’t built to match the influx.
So, Hunt Highway remained a two-lane road, not equipped to handle the estimated average 25,000 vehicles a day that drive it.
The 12-mile Pinal County stretch is designed for half as many cars.
It remains the only way in and out of a region that is now nearing 100,000 residents.
“I knew in 2006 and 2007 people who were trailblazing
through the desert to avoid traffic. They’d just cut across open desert. You couldn’t blame them. They were stuck in traffic for hours. It was that bad,” said Pinal County Supervisor Pete Rios.
The highway wasn’t just crowded; it was dangerous.
San Tan resident Ilene Evans called it a deathtrap in a 2006
Arizona Republic article. Around that time, there were 17 fatal or serious injury crashes during a 21⁄ 2- year period, and 370 crashes overall.
But state, local and transportation budget battles and a recession stopped any progress toward improvements. Until now. Motorists can see the grading between Empire Boulevard and Gary Road, heavy equipment, temporary closures, message boards and detours, all signs that long-awaited relief is on its way.
“AmI excited? You bet I am,” said Supervisor Cheryl Chase, who represents that area, in a written statement. “Once this entire project is completed, it will be easier for public-safety vehicles to get to an emergency, and we won’t have the huge back-ups like we see now.” It’s only a small start. Pinal County officials originally estimated widening the full 12 miles between Florence and the Maricopa County line would cost $75 million, money the county didn’t have.
In 2008, the county hoped to borrow $47 million from the Greater Arizona Development Authority, but learned that development impact fees wouldn’t generate enough money to repay the loan.
With no funding, improvements to the road were delayed, then split into seven phases.
The current work is a $5 mil- lion project to widen1.7 miles to two lanes of travel in each direction.
It’s expected to be completed in August.
The work was possible because in spring 2011, the federal government awarded $5 million for the project.
The next three phases will cost another $20 million, county spokesman Joe Pyritz said. There’s no estimate for the final three phases.
“The goal was to get enough funding to complete the entire project,” Chase said. “We have the funding in place for Phase 1. It’s now time to work on getting the other six phases funded.”
Rios is hopeful, but not optimistic.
“I don’t see any end in sight, to be honest,” he said.
The Hunt Highway may be Pinal County’s biggest traffic headache, but it’s not the only one. County officials, economists, developers and city leaders around the county all think another housing boom is just around the corner.
Two highways, one from the city of Maricopa to Casa Grande and Arizona 347, between Maricopa and Chandler, are congested and near a fastgrowing community. Longer term, the Arizona Department of Transportation is in the early stages of planning two potential new freeways in Pinal County, a proposed Interstate 11 between the Casa Grande area and Wickenburg, and a proposed “NorthSouth Highway” paralleling Arizona 79 past Florence.
There’s no funding for any of the work, beyond building a train-track overpass in Maricopa on Arizona 347.
Facing forecasts in 2006 that its population would explode from then 270,000 to 1.9 million by 2025, Pinal County commissioned its first countywide longrange traffic study. The study concluded highway improvements to handle all the new traffic would cost $1.56 billion.