A long-awaited project to widen a vital state highway through Prairieville that has sustained a myriad of delays will face just one more, parish officials say, before it's finished after more than six years.

The $27.5 million expansion of La. 42 is projected to be finished by the end of 2020 after delays from the novel coronavirus outbreak pushed back the previous finish date, which had been planned at Thanksgiving time, Ascension Parish President Clint Cointment said.

"Barring any other work stoppages due to unforeseen circumstances or adverse weather, the contractor is on schedule for opening all lanes of travel in late December 2020," parish officials said in a statement.

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PRAIRIEVILLE Construction of a $27.5 million expansion of La. 42 in Ascension Parish started Monday and is expected to take more than two ye

When state highway and parish officials broke ground on the construction phase of the project in December 2017, the highway was then anticipated to be finished in the spring of 2020. The new delay is the latest in a series for a project that began in 2014.

The project has involved widening two-lane La. 42 to four lanes with a median across nearly 3.5 miles from Airline Highway to just past La. 44. The new wider highway has already largely taken shape, with J-turns for left turns and U-turns, a sidewalk and a bike trail. The new road, once finished, will have 11-foot-wide lanes.

Since the early 1990s, the area along La. 42 has grown into a suburban zone of a few retail shops and many new neighborhoods.

The highway project had been stymied for years from lack of funding and was handed off from administration to administration following a mid-1990s fatal crash that first prompted calls to widen the thoroughfare.

Once finished, the job will have missed its very first projected finish date by more than four years.

Preparatory work on the widening project has been underway since March 2014, when the state kicked off land clearing. At that time, state highway officials thought the entire widening project could be finished by the summer of 2016.

But work was tied up for three years in utility installations when parish government contractors were called in to lay down new sewer lines required for the road widening to proceed. The new wider La. 42 doesn't have open ditches along the highway, which had formerly received sewer discharges.

PRAIRIEVILLE Loretta Templet and Sherri LeBas hugged outside an Ascension Parish library along La. 42 shortly after LeBas, the Louisiana sec

Cointment noted the importance of La. 42 as an east-west corridor.

Parish officials said contractors are currently working on the median near a Rouse's grocery story and moving east and on curbing along the road's edge on other sections of the road.

Once enough curbing is installed, contractors will begin applying the nearly 15 inches deep of asphalt for the road surface.

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After more than 6 years, this big Prairieville road project might be done in 2020 - The Advocate