ABBEVILLE, La. (KLFY) - Road work is on the way for Abbeville as the mayor is working with the Department of Transportation to get an agreement from the Road Transfer Program.

The mayor said one of the biggest complaints she hears is the condition of the streets. 

“A common misconception is the roads through our downtown that the local government has the authority to fix or deal with problems on them,” she said. “In Abbeville, our downtown roads, actually, both roads that dissect our downtown, are state highways. There are no local streets, and they are in very bad condition.” 

The mayor told News 10 that the state offers the road transfer, which allows local governments to take over state highways that might be in their downtown or might still exist in the community but isn’t serving the current needs of the community.

“It allows the state to get rid of an asset they don’t have the capacity to maintain and gives your local government back the authority over those streets,” said Mayor White. “One of the things that we’re doing is working with DOTD to negotiate a road transfer where our downtown streets are no longer state highways and will become local streets, which means we get to put a sense of community back into our downtown.” 

The mayor said there is a current plan in place as well as funding to fix the downtown streets. 

“This is a way, one, to get our streets fixed faster, and two; whenever we have a problem on the streets, the local government can deal with the problem as opposed to having to wait for DOTD,” said the mayor. “It’s proven successful in many communities its actually a tool that many communities use to make their downtown healthy again, and so it’s very appealing to me because I want to restore a sense of a place in our downtown as well as have the streets in better condition for people doing business here, working here or living here in Abbeville.” 

In addition to working on a longer-term plan where the city would actually, over a phased approach, DOTD will come in and fix the other state highways through our city, which are in the inner part of the city, and as they fix them, they will turn them over to the local government to have control.

“As part of that program, you also get 40 years of maintenance credits. So with those maintenance credits, as the road transfer program receives more funds in future years, the state would come in and fix local streets until you use up all the maintenance credits,” she said. 

“If we’re successful and striking to deal with DOTD, we would not only get 6 miles of state highways within our city turned over to the local authority and fixed and resurfaced, we would also get an additional six miles of local streets resurfaced in the future,” she adds. 

Mayor White said they are looking at a total of 5.6 million dollars in funding. As soon as the agreement is done with DOTD, they will move forward with the construction design of LA 14 first. Then LA 82 is the second phase, and after that, funding becomes available in the state budget.