A critical link to traffic infrastructure in Huntsville is on the brink to becoming a reality.

Construction is expected to begin in early 2020 on completing a segment of what’s known as the Northern Bypass – extending the four-lane Martin Luther King Jr. Highway to Memorial Parkway.

The significance of the project is that it will create a new four-lane highway directly to Redstone Arsenal – where more than 40,000 people report for work each day.

It will also help alleviate congestion at the I-565/Memorial Parkway interchange near downtown.

“Probably first quarter of next year, we’ll see construction activity (on the Northern Bypass extension)‚” said Shane Davis, the city’s director of economic and urban development.

It's a $37 million project to be split evenly between the city of Huntsville and the Alabama Department of Transportation as part of the city's Restore Our Roads program. A 2021 opening is the target. Davis said right-of-way acquisition is about 95 percent complete and planning is about 90 percent complete.

It will include a new intersection on Memorial Parkway, eliminating the current intersection at Bob Wade Lane. That road will feed into the Northern Bypass, Davis said.

The Northern Bypass will slice between the TVA transmission lines and Bob Wade line – preserving the dozens of homes along Bob Wade Lane, according to Davis.

"If we went north (of the intended route), we would be annihilating neighborhoods," Davis said. "There is nothing developed along the transmission line."

The final segment connecting MLK Highway and Memorial Parkway is about 3.4 miles and currently is a two-lane road through that neighborhood that's not conducive to high traffic counts.

Once complete, commuters in northern Madison County as well as southern Tennessee will have a more direct, high-speed access route to the arsenal. Davis said he expects the new highway will result in additional estimated 18,000 cars traveling the route daily.

According to a traffic count conducted earlier this year, there are about 25,000 cars daily on MLK Jr. Highway – which stretches from Alabama Highway 53 to Pulaski Pike. Even without the extended Northern Bypass, that number figures only to rise with the Toyota Motor Manufacturing plant undergoing expansion and adding about 450 new jobs as well as the nearby Facebook data center expected online sometime next year.

The plans on the drawing board, of course, don't stop with completing that segment of the Northern Bypass. Eventually, the plans call for the bypass to connect with U.S. Highway 72 in east Huntsville.

For now, the next step – beyond connecting the bypass to the parkway – is extending the four-lane highway to Winchester Road. That’s a $24 million project with both city and state funding. Davis said that will further enhance growth and development in the New Market area and ease traffic flow in the northern part of the city.