Panola, Quitman, Coahoma still wait turn on Hwy. 6

This year — 2017 — was once the projected completion date for the Batesville bypass project that would carry through east/west traffic south of the present route of Highway 6 through Batesville and relieve the traffic volume that we see crawling through town today.
That is all history now.
The only construction on Highway 6 west from I-55 to Clarksdale is the project presently under way to replace bridges incapable of safely carrying loaded trucks. Other traffic will continue sharing that two-lane route with those trucks for the foreseeable future.
We have seen history repeat itself during the 30 years since talk of the bypass first surfaced.
In the 1990s as casinos began to flourish in Tunica County, the state adopted a frenzied highway construction program to build safer, four-lane routes leading to the newest playground in northwest Mississippi. Panola, Quitman and Coahoma counties were told to wait until that construction was completed, then the state could direct money to four-lane Highway 6.
After the highways leading to Robinsonville got completed, along came Hurricane Katrina in 2005, wiping out much highway and bridge infrastructure near the Gulf Coast.
We were told to wait while highway funding was directed toward rebuilding those devastated highways and bridges; that our turn would be next.
But when the recession began in 2008 to shrink state tax revenue and federal highway dollars, Panola, Quitman and Coahoma were pretty much told that we had missed our turn.
During this year’s legislative session senators and representatives have enjoyed dickering over where those millions from the BP oil spill would get spent. North Mississippi, much less Panola, Quitman and Coahoma counties, never had enough legislative clout to see a penny.
Now comes Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant’s wish list for $7 billion in highway construction money from President Trump’s promise to ask Congress for a $1 trillion investment in the nation’s infrastructure.
Of course, widening Highway 6 was not worthy of that list, but $1.83 billion to build 120 miles of Interstate 69 from Robinsonville to Benoit was. If that should become reality, truck traffic along the two lanes of Highway 6 between Batesville and Clarksdale will only increase.
There is a bright side to that. Clarksdale Chamber of Commerce Director Ron Hudson said that he spoke with Northern District Highway Commissioner Mike Tagert, expressing his disappointment that the I-69 project was the only one in north Mississippi on the Governor’s wish list. (In fairness, it was the governor’s list, not MDOT’s.)
But, with increased traffic on I-69 fueling more traffic onto Highway 6, could that influence Mississippi to finally build four lanes from Clarksdale to Batesville?
Will our turn finally come?