Project on tentative letting schedule
BY ROGER SMITH
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN
BEAUTY — A motorcycle went off KY Route 40 and into Buck Creek near Big Elk Road on Saturday evening, the latest in a series of crashes along a stretch of highway the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet identified for safety improvements more than 13 years ago.
Martin County 911 received the call at 5:55 p.m. Saturday. The caller reported that a motorcycle went off the roadway and into the creek in Beauty and that a man and woman were involved.
The caller said the motorcyclist was trying to reach his wife, who was down in the water.
Emergency responders later reported pulling the woman from the creek with blood on her face and a possible head injury. Rapid Ambulance transported her to an emergency room for treatment.
Warfield Volunteer Fire Department responded with Squad 11 and six personnel and cleared the scene at 7:47 p.m.
Saturday’s wreck follows three other recent crashes in the same location.
On Aug. 3, a Van Lear woman swerved to avoid a head-on collision, and her car came to rest on its roof in Buck Creek. Grace Jude was trapped after the impact jammed the doors until an unidentified man stopped and forced the passenger-side door open far enough for her to get out.
The Aug. 3 wreck came only weeks after another motorcycle went into the creek at the Buck Creek crossing in late June and a car went off and landed on its top in May.
The June motorcycle rider was part of a group of six to eight motorcyclists touring from Wisconsin. Emergency responders found him injured and unable to climb from the creek. Martin County Sheriff John Kirk said the rider suffered serious injuries and was taken to Highlands before being flown to Lexington.
Following the June wreck, Kirk said that the crossing was a recurring accident scene. He pointed to the lack of safety rails or signage and the curve approaching the structure from the Warfield direction.
“That’s a trouble spot,” Kirk said at the time. “There’s no guardrail on the bridge. There have been multiple wrecks there.”
Kirk also recalled another wreck in May in which a vehicle landed on its roof in the creek. Five people were in the vehicle and one had been flown out for treatment.
“This has been going on for years, and there are no guardrails on the bridge to keep you from going into the creek,” he said in June. “It’s a trick curve coming from Warfield toward Inez. You can just drive off the bridge if you’re not familiar with it, and that’s what’s been happening.”
After that wreck, Kirk contacted state Rep. Bobby McCool, state Sen. Phillip Wheeler, then-Senior Advisor to Governor Rocky Adkins, and the chief engineer for the Transportation Cabinet’s District 12 office in Pikeville to raise safety concerns again.
Kirk said utility work, including relocation of a gas line, had been among the obstacles holding up the larger project. While awaiting reconstruction, he called for guardrails and warning signs at the crossing.
“It’s time to do something — to quit sitting on our hands and do something,” Kirk said. “That could be your family member or my family member. It’s just a very dangerous spot, and in 2026, there is no excuse for it.”
State documented safety problems
Transportation Cabinet records show the state’s formal study of the safety problems dates to the 2012 Highway Plan.
Item 12-0192.00 was established for reconstruction of KY Route 40 near KY 2031, or Big Elk Road. The Cabinet’s Division of Planning and District 12 completed a Data Needs Analysis and scoping study in January 2013.
The study found significant deficiencies in both the roadway and the existing structure.
The Cabinet classified the culvert as structurally deficient and functionally obsolete, giving it a sufficiency rating of 46.9. The study noted open cracks in the culvert walls and said the approaches on both sides were located within curves. It concluded that the curves and alignment geometry along that section of KY Route 40 were substandard.
The state also had a substantial crash history.
As part of the study, the Cabinet reviewed 10 years of collision data from the Kentucky State Police Analysis Database for the section between milepoints 18.2 and 18.4. The report does not identify the exact beginning and ending years covered by that 10-year review.
The analysis found 26 crashes, including 10 injury crashes that resulted in 14 injuries. It also documented one fatality, which the study said occurred when a vehicle ran off the roadway and struck the culvert.
Construction once planned for 2017
The project was not envisioned in 2013 as something that would remain pending into the latter half of the 2020s.
The 2012 General Assembly’s enacted Highway Plan programmed design for 2014, right-of-way acquisition and utility work for 2016 and construction for 2017. The report said design funding had already been approved when the study was prepared.
The Highway Plan estimates cited in the study included $500,000 for design, $100,000 for right-of-way, $220,000 for utilities and $1.15 million for construction, for an overall estimated cost of about $1.97 million at that time.
More than nine years have passed since that originally programmed 2017 construction year.
The Cabinet’s current project data continue to identify the realignment project.
Project scores 35.98 in SHIFT
In February 2026, the project was evaluated in the Cabinet’s 2026 Strategic Highway Investment Formula for Tomorrow, or SHIFT, process.
SHIFT is the Cabinet’s data-driven system for comparing transportation projects and helping determine how to prioritize limited highway funds. It considers seven factors: safety, congestion, asset management, economic growth, benefit-cost, resiliency and non-motorized mobility. Safety is only one part of the overall score; the safety component considers crash history and roadway characteristics.
The District 12 report presents scores on a scale up to 100. The Transportation Cabinet explains that statewide projects are scored from zero to 100, while local projects initially use a zero-to-80 scale and can receive local priority boosts that raise the score as high as 100. Higher scores place projects higher in the prioritization process.
The KY 40/Big Elk Road project received a SHIFT score of 35.98 out of 100.
That score ranked the project 34th among 59 projects in District 12.
Scores in the District 12 report ranged from a high of 81.53 for a Johnson County KY 172 design project to a low of 4.57 for a Pike County project on Cassidy Boulevard and Thompson Road.
Among the seven Martin County projects in the report, the KY 40/Big Elk Road project ranked sixth. Martin County projects scoring above it included KY 292 from Warfield north to KY 908 at 61.03; the Inez-to-Warfield KY Route 40 relocation section from Little Blacklog to Booth Fork at 56.11; KY 292 from KY Route 40 south to the Pike County line at 49.69; improvements to KY 908 at 47.25; and KY Route 40 improvements from the Johnson County line to KY 645 at 46.40.
Only a KY 2032 curve-revision project, with a score of 27.78, ranked below KY 40/Big Elk.
Records show different years
Current Kentucky Transportation Cabinet records are not consistent on when construction funding for the project is programmed.
The 2026 Enacted Highway Plan shows construction funding in fiscal year 2028. A separate Six-Year Plan authorized-project data set also lists the construction phase in 2028 and shows “No Award Date.”
Another 2026 Cabinet project record, however, lists construction as an estimated fiscal year 2026 phase at $1,974,646. That record also shows $250,000 authorized for design and $455,000 for utility work, both dated Dec. 12, 2024.
The reason for the differing fiscal years in the Cabinet records was not immediately clear.
The Cabinet’s tentative construction letting schedule provides a more specific near-term date. A schedule dated June 15 lists the project for the Oct. 22, 2026, bid letting.
If that letting remains on schedule, the project the Cabinet formally studied in January 2013 could finally reach the construction bidding stage more than 13 years later.