Update On The Four-Lane Highway Being Built From Watford City To Williston

The Bismarck Tribune is reporting:

It's an upside-down world in the oil patch, when spending millions of dollars to acquire land to widen highways seems like chump change indeed.

The state Department of Transportation has embarked on a huge project, turning U.S. Highway 85, a notorious death trap, into a much safer four-lane corridor from Watford City to Williston. It's a distance of about 46 miles and about 7,000 semi trucks.

The cost of the project is estimated at $300 million, the single largest project in terms of dollars the department has undertaken in its history.

Included in that enormous price tag is the cost of buying land from adjacent landowners in a region where property values have absolutely skyrocketed.

It's a new situation for the DOT, which for decades has maintained highways, not built them.

"We haven't acquired this much right-of-way since the '50s," said Bob Fode, DOT's director of project development.

The DOT is paying an average $22,000 an acre, or roughly $140,000 a mile for what amounts to about 20 feet on either side of the existing highway. That buys enough room to expand from two to four lanes with an interior median.