Monday, March 26, 2012

Foley Municipal (5R4), Alabama: Airport regulations could close Foley's Fern Avenue

FOLEY, Alabama -- Four feet of elevation could shut down a section of Fern Avenue south of the municipal airport and require a $1 million bypass, city officials said.

The road extends along a rise south of the runway that is too high to be in the runway approach path under state and federal aviation regulations, said Brett Morrow of Volkert Engineering .

"The grade increases as you come east, and it’s about a 4-foot violation of the approach surface, so you’d have to lower Fern by about 4 feet or raise the end of the runway by 4 feet," Morrow said.

Lowering the road would also require moving utility lines and culverts, Michael Thompson, city administrator, said. Raising the runway could be even more expensive than lowering the road or building a new route, he said.

Either alternative could also require closing the airport until construction is complete.

If nothing is done, however, the city could lose federal funding for the airport or its license to operate the facility, Morrow said.

Fern Avenue runs east and west, extending from just east of Ala. 59 to Baldwin County 65. The road is used by area residents and employees of plants such as the Goodrich Aerostructures facility near the airport.

City Council members told Volkert officials and City Engineer Wendell "Butch" Stokes to design plans to extend Airport Road south from Fern Avenue about 2,000 feet to Cater Lee Way near the city’s baseball and soccer park complex. That would allow the city to close Fern Avenue before it encroaches on the runway approach zone.

The new route could provide a link between Cater Lee Way and Baldwin County 24. Joe Bouzan, airport manager, said such a road could help with traffic leaving events at the ball park complex, which hosts, among other events Foley’s annual Hot Air Balloon Festival.

One problem would be that trucks going to industrial sites near the airport might also go south to get to U.S. 98, putting tractor trailer rigs on the road with cars carrying children to games, Councilman Wayne Trawick said.

Before 2010, trucks bringing supplies to the plant also used Fern Avenue. That year, city officials extended Airport Road north to Baldwin County 24, another east-west route. Foley officials built the extension to relieve truck traffic through local neighborhoods between the plant and Ala. 59.

The County Commission also added turn lanes to Baldwin 24 to accommodate truck traffic at the Airport Road intersection.

Trawick said this week that officials do not want a new southern extension of Airport Road to create new problems with heavy traffic around children and parents.

"I’d like to see all the options. I hate to close that street, but we may not have a choice," Trawick said."Bringing the street through to Cater Lee Way is great in a lot of ways, but it’s bad in that you’re going to get truck traffic through there to the park. Trucks through the middle of a park is not good."

Bouzan said officials with the Alabama Aeronautics Bureau notified Foley around 2010 that the road violated the federal Runway Protection Zone. The city has not been given a deadline to fix the violation.

"The state and FAA are aware that we’re working to resolve it," Bouzan said Friday. "They’ve been fine with that. Of course, if we waited too long, they could come back with an ultimatum."

The FAA would pay 90 percent of the cost to extend Airport Road south and close Fern Avenue, Morrow said.

The current estimate is that extending the road about 2,000 feet would cost $1 million. City officials could apply to the state for half of the $100,000 local costs, leaving Foley to pay about $50,000, Morrow said. 

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