FAIRHOPE — After announcing in January that plans to extend the Baldwin Beach Express cannot move forward without funding, Baldwin County commissioners voted Tuesday, Feb. 7 to drop plans for a traffic study.

The commission voted to halt negotiations to develop an investment grade traffic study intended to develop plans to extend the Beach Express from Interstate 10 north to Interstate 65. The commission will also notify CDM Smith Inc., the company working with the county on the project, that the county will not be moving ahead on the project, according to the resolution.

Joey Nunnally, county engineer, told commissioners that the county is stopping plans to develop "requests for qualifications," from companies to prepare the traffic study.

"Y'all had taken previous actions in order to authorize me and my staff to take an RFQ and enter it into negotiations in order to do this investment grade traffic study," Nunnally said. "According to recent conversations we've had with the commission, y'all don't want us pursuing that anymore, so this is just taking official commission action to halt those."

In January, commissioners said that they planned to list the Beach Express extension as an inactive project. The county highway plan had scheduled the project to be completed by 2027.

In the January meeting, commissioners said state funding is not available to help pay the estimated $300 million that the project is expected to cost. In 2020, Baldwin County voters rejected a proposal to allow the county to create a toll authority to use fees on that section of the highway to pay construction costs.

In October 2021, the commission authorized the highway department and county purchasing department to begin work to develop the traffic study needed to plan the budget for the project. In June 2022, the commission authorized county staff members to begin negotiations with CDM Smith on plans to develop the study.

The Baldwin Beach Express now runs from the Intracoastal Waterway in Orange Beach to I-10. The proposed next phase of the project would have extended the four-lane highway 24.5 miles north to I-65, according to county reports. The project would include 18 bridges and interchanges with I-65 and U.S. 31 near Bay Minette.

The Beach Express opened in 2000 as a 14-mile route between Foley and the toll bridge crossing the Intracoastal Waterway in Orange Beach. The route was extended 13 miles farther north to Interstate 10 in 2014.