The Rockcastle Creek Pedway Project did not die because the City of Inez neglected it.

It did not fail because local officials refused to invest in it, would not obtain the property or abandoned the required paperwork.

The State of Kentucky failed this project.

For nearly two decades, the proposed pedestrian bridge and walkway has been trapped inside the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s bureaucracy. State officials gave assurances, announced progress, discussed bids and predicted construction. Yet the residents who were supposed to benefit still have no bridge.

District 1 Magistrate Cody Slone was right to revive the discussion during the July meeting of the Martin County Fiscal Court.

The project would connect Old Route 3 and Boardwalk Street across Rockcastle Creek near Skeeze Ward Manor. It would give residents of the manor and nearby apartments a more direct route to the Inez post office, Dollar General and other downtown destinations.

For people who do not drive, use wheelchairs or have difficulty walking, that connection is access, independence, and the ability to conduct ordinary business without navigating a longer and more difficult route around the creek.

The City of Inez began pursuing the project in 2009. It invested approximately $35,000 in engineering services and property acquisition—about $54,481 in today’s purchasing power. The engineering was completed. The rights-of-way were obtained. The city retained the original plans and project records.

The city did what it was told to do.

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet did not deliver.

The state advertised the project for bids twice. When the July 2020 proposals exceeded the available construction funding, state officials said they were seeking more money.

Later that year, the city was told that a contractor had been found and that construction could begin soon. The Martin County Fiscal Court moved to restore $36,000 in coal severance funding previously committed to the project. Officials expected construction in spring 2021.

Spring came and went.

Then came another explanation. State officials said the bids were too high. Later, they said the project needed to be advertised again. At one point, the city was told that bid documents would be ready by the end of the month. At another, a Transportation Cabinet official acknowledged that the project was active but “just stuck.”

That phrase may have described the project’s status, but it did not explain how the state allowed a modest pedestrian project to remain stuck for years.

The state’s handling of the project was a chain of assurances without results, changing explanations without accountability and delays that caused the estimated cost to climb from $400,000 to approximately $700,000.

The state even allowed the project to disappear from later transportation plans while telling local officials it remained active.

The City of Inez cannot award federal transportation money to itself. It cannot administer a state transportation program. It cannot force the Transportation Cabinet to advertise a project correctly, accept a bid, secure additional funding or move construction forward.

Those responsibilities belonged to the state.

So does the failure.

Now, after years of silence, local officials are once again trying to revive a project that should have been completed long ago. The city still has the plans. The need still exists. Unfortunately, the price has increased because the state allowed time and inflation to consume the original funding.

Kentucky should not expect the residents of one of its poorest communities to pay the price for Frankfort’s bureaucratic failures.

The Transportation Cabinet should account publicly for the money authorized for the Rockcastle Creek Pedway, explain precisely how the project was allowed to stall and identify what remains necessary to build it. The state should then provide the additional funding required to complete the work.

This should not become another round of telephone calls, applications, feasibility studies and vague promises.

The project has already been studied. It has already been designed. Property has already been acquired. Money has already been invested. Bids have already been sought.

What has been missing is state accountability.

Slone’s decision to raise the issue allows the city and county to speak with one voice. The City of Inez must lead because it owns the project, and Martin County should use its influence and administrative resources to support the effort.

But local government should not be asked to accept the blame or bear the full cost of rescuing a project the state allowed to collapse.

The residents of Skeeze Ward Manor and the surrounding neighborhood have waited long enough.

Kentucky stalled the Rockcastle Creek Pedway, allowed its funding to lose value and left Inez residents waiting.

Now Kentucky must build it.