By Bill Coates
Casa Grande Dispatch
Transportation planners are big on maps.
They have maps that show a world that might be. They have maps with concepts like a freeway that comes south from Buckeye through Hidden Valley and east toward Casa Grande on Rodeo Road. One map shows it swinging up to McCartney Road and connecting with Interstate 10. Another shows it hooking up with Interstate 8 at Montgomery Road.
Some maps call it the Hassayampa Freeway. It doesn’t exist. Maybe it never will. Then again, perhaps it will be a key component of the Canamex Corridor, a free-trade route linking Mexico, the United States and Canada.
Perhaps there will be a southern extension of Interstate 11 between Phoenix and Las Vegas, another freeway that exists only on maps, on a vaguely defined route.
Maps show another road would largely follow Maricopa- Casa Grande Highway. It would cover more than 20 miles. The eastern portion would track Val Vista Road. Settling on a final map will come out of a nearly $1 million Pinal County East- West Corridor study, with the cost split evenly by the county, Casa Grande and Maricopa.
That study is just a first step in a broader plan to create a network of roads tying the county closer together, said Andy Smith, Pinal County transportation planner. Right now, the straightest line from eastern to western Pinal County follows
a washboard-riddled dirt road known, somewhat ironically, as Florence-Kelvin Highway. It’s almost like the old joke: You can’t get there from here.
“There is no continuous route that you can take from, say, Kearny to Maricopa,” Smith said. Motorists wanting a highway route now, he said, have to go north on Arizona 177, west on U.S. 60 and south on Interstate 10 to Arizona 347.
