New Circle Road, also known as Kentucky Route 4, is a Kentucky

state highway A state highway, state road, or state route (and the equivalent provincial highway, provincial road, or provincial route) is usually a road that is either ''numbered'' or ''maintained'' by a sub-national state or province. A road numbered by a ...

that serves as an inner

beltway A ring road (also known as circular road, beltline, beltway, circumferential (high)way, loop, bypass or orbital) is a road or a series of connected roads encircling a town, city, or country. The most common purpose of a ring road is to assist i ...

around Lexington, which is part of the

consolidated city-county In United States local government, a consolidated city-county is formed when one or more cities and their surrounding county ( parish in Louisiana, borough in Alaska) merge into one unified jurisdiction. As such it has the governmental powers o ...

government with Fayette County. The state designates the start and finish of the road at its interchange with Nicholasville Road on the city's south side. Exit numbering increases as one travels clockwise. Roughly three-fourths of the highway is

limited-access A limited-access road, known by various terms worldwide, including limited-access highway, dual-carriageway, expressway, limited access freeway, and partial controlled access highway, is a highway or arterial road for high-speed traffic which ...

, with all movements controlled at 10 interchanges. The remainder is classified as an urban principal arterial highway with a heavy mix of driveway entrances and intersections with one

single-point urban interchange A single-point urban interchange (SPUI, or ), also called a single-point interchange (SPI) or single-point diamond interchange (SPDI), is a type of highway interchange. The design was created in order to help move large volumes of traffic thro ...

US 60 U.S. Route 60 is a major east–west United States highway, traveling from southwestern Arizona to the Atlantic Ocean coast in Virginia. The highway's eastern terminus is in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where it is known as Pacific Avenue, in the ...

(Winchester Road) and a

diverging diamond interchange A diverging diamond interchange (DDI), also called a double crossover diamond interchange (DCD), is a subset of diamond interchange in which the opposing directions of travel on the non-freeway road cross each other on either side of the inte ...

US 68 U.S. Route 68 (US 68) is a United States highway that runs for from northwest Ohio to Western Kentucky. The highway's western terminus is at US 62 in Reidland, Kentucky. Its present northern terminus is at Interstate 75 in Findlay, Ohio, though ...

(Harrodsburg Road). The dividing line between the limited-access segment and the urban arterial highway is

US 25 U.S. Route 25 (US 25) is a north–south United States Highway that runs for in the southern and midwestern US. Its southern terminus is in Brunswick, Georgia, from where it proceeds mostly due north, passing through the cities of Augusta, Georg ...

(Richmond and Georgetown Roads) north and east of the city. The speed limit is on the freeway section and on the urban arterial highway. New Circle Road suffers serious traffic congestion during rush hour due to the lack of other freeways running through the city. Harrodsburg Road, Nicholasville Road, Tates Creek Road, and Newtown Pike also suffer serious congestion because of people trying to get on New Circle and head out of downtown Lexington.

History

New Circle Road was constructed in several segments from 1950 to 1967 as a circumferential bypass. The first segment to be built, from KY 922 (Newtown Pike) to

(Richmond Road)/

US 421 U.S. Route 421 (also U.S. Highway 421, US 421) is a diagonal northwest–southeast United States Numbered Highway in the states of North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, and Indiana. The highway runs for from Fort Fisher, North Carol ...

, was constructed by the city of Lexington in 1952 as two-lane connector road. The original section included at-grade intersections at Palumbo Drive, KY 1927 (Liberty Road), KY 57 (Bryan Station Road), Old Paris Pike,

US 27 U.S. Route 27 (US 27) is a north–south United States Highway in the southern and midwestern United States. The southern terminus is at US 1 in Miami, Florida. The northern terminus is at Interstate 69 (I-69) in Fort Wayne, Indiana. F ...

, and at KY 353 (Russell Cave Road), with one interchange at

(Winchester Road). This segment of the road is also known as the Northern Belt Line or the US 25 Bypass. To help finance the construction of the original 1952 portion, driveway access was sold to property owners along the route. After the opening, this section experienced rapid growth and the need to widen it to four lanes from two became evident. In 1958, maintenance was taken over by the state and construction began on the widening to four lanes as it became US 25 Bypass. The remainder of the highway around Lexington was constructed to near-urban freeway standards with controlled access. Construction of interchanges at

(Richmond Road)/

, KY 1974 (Tates Creek Road),

(Nicholasville Road),

(Harrodsburg Road),

(Versailles Road), KY 1681 (Old Frankfort Pike),

(Leestown Road),

(Georgetown Road) and at KY 922 (Newtown Pike). The interchange with Alumni Drive was constructed in late 1984 at a cost of $2 million with the extension of what was then Mount Tabor Road southeastward towards

Man o' War Boulevard Man o' War Boulevard, named after the racehorse Man o' War, is an almost 17-mile (27 km) urban arterial, circling Lexington, Kentucky to its south. Its western terminus is at US 60 (Versailles Road) / Keeneland Boulevard at Keeneland Race C ...

Winchester Road/US 60 interchange reconstruction

The interchange with

(Winchester Road), built in 1961, was sorely out-of-date by the 1980s. Tight ramps and a narrow underpass with no acceleration or deceleration lanes made this a dangerous pseudo-cloverleaf interchange. Trucks, too tall for the substandard overpass height clearance, would frequently damage the bridge girders. Work started in the late 1990s to convert this outdated exit into a

(SPUI). There are two left turn lanes on each ramp, and those are controlled by a single traffic light instead of two. Longer ramps for merging onto New Circle Road were added. In the fall of 2000, the new Winchester Road interchange opened to traffic at a cost of $8.1 million.

Reconstructing New Circle Road

An early study, part of the "Urban County Government's Year 2000 Transportation Plan", stated that New Circle should be widened to six-lanes by the year 2000. In 1987, the

Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government Lexington is a city in Kentucky, United States that is the county seat of Fayette County. By population, it is the second-largest city in Kentucky and 57th-largest city in the United States. By land area, it is the country's 28th-largest ...

recommended a solution to the section of New Circle Road from Georgetown Road/

to Richmond Road/US 25/

. New Circle Road in the northeastern quadrant of Lexington has high traffic volumes, numerous accidents and traffic delays as motorists face numerous commercial access points, congested intersections, poor traffic signal progressions, and a very low level of service made worse during peak hours. None of these recommendations by the urban government were implemented however. By 1997, a section of New Circle from Tates Creek Road to Nicholasville Road was averaging more than 60,000 vehicles per day, up from 17,000 30 years ago and an increase of 256%. In August 1999, the

Kentucky Transportation Center The Kentucky Transportation Center (or KTC) is a university transportation research center within the University of Kentucky College of Engineering The University of Kentucky College of Engineering is an ABET accredited, public engineering sch ...

at the

University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a Public University, public Land-grant University, land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentu ...

College of Engineering completed Research Report KTC-99-55, "Conversion of New Circle Road to a limited Access Facility". The study compared the addition of one lane in each direction with the use of median U-turns and restricted left-turn strategies at selected intersections from Newtown Pike/ KY 922 to Richmond Road/US 25/US 421. This was presented to the Lexington Area Metropolitan Planning Organization and is considered to have been the stimulus for the development of the New Circle Road Northeast improvement study that began on December 1 of 1999. Four alternatives for the segment from Newtown Pike/KY 922 to Richmond Road/US 25/US 421 were presented and a fifth was introduced later after combining several key ideas that the residents voiced their approval of at several public meetings:

Recent construction projects

In November 2012, the Kentucky Department of Transportation announced the widening of New Circle Road from four to six lanes from just west of Georgetown Road to Versailles Road. Construction began in the fall of 2013 and was completed in 2016 at a cost of $80 million.

Exit list

References

External links

*
KY 4
at KentuckyRoads.com
New Circle Road Widening Project
{{Named Roads in Kentucky Beltways in the United States Transportation in Lexington, Kentucky Freeways in the United States Expressways in the United States