Corridor H - A 2020 Vision

In 1965, Congress authorized the Appalachian Development Highway to connect Appalachia to the rest of the world with limited access to four-lane highways. Some of those corridors have now become interstate highways. From Maine to Alabama, these roads have opened commerce to the people, businesses, and mountains of Appalachia. They were designed for only one purpose – to open the entire region to more economic development opportunities.

In West Virginia, every Corridor except one is completed - Corridor H. Stretching 130 miles from I-79 at Weston, West Virginia and it runs to the Virginia border where it is designed to travel an additional 13 miles to I-81 junction near the I-66 junction at Front Royal, Virginia.

The highway in West Virginia is currently 82% complete, under construction, or contracted currently and is scheduled to increase to 87% by 2018. Our vision is to see the road in the Mountain State completed or under construction by 2020.

Billions of dollars of exported goods from West Virginia will have direct access to the large inland port at Front Royal, Virginia, where a double-stacked container rail can then take the goods to the deepest port on the Eastern Seaboard at Norfolk. This will be eastern West Virginia’s only direct access to a global port.

The economic impact of building the highway by 2020 is $1.2 billion in addition to the impact from construction.