SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — The new Kansas Expressway extension will be open in the middle of November after a few construction delays.

The intersection of Plainview Road and the new Kansas Expressway extension was initially planned to be completed by the beginning of November but has been pushed back a couple of weeks. The county says the road project will now be completed on November 15.

Neighbors tell OzarksFirst the detours are causing more traffic through their once quiet neighborhood.

“It was definitely challenging to have to go through this process,” said Peggy Hedgpeth, whose house sits right beside the construction.

The expansion has been delayed several times, like in August when construction workers found AT&T lines that needed to be moved.

The Greene County Highway Department says this time, the delay is from “typical construction.”

“There are some utility relocations and taps that had to be made, and those were delayed slightly,” said Mark Webb, the assistant administrator for the Greene County Highway Department. “So then it just adds up and the contractor wasn’t able to make as good a progress as he initially anticipated.”

Between the 15th and the end of the year, the highway department says the paving will finish up and the Kansas extension from Republic Road to Plainview will officially open.

“We were just thankful that we had all those years without the road,” Hedgpeth said.

For the Hedgpeths, this road extension is nearly 30 years in the making.

“They bought us out in 1997 and said then that they were going to be putting in Kansas Expressway so we assumed that it would be within a few years,” Hedgpeth said. “We had no idea it would be 2023 before they would have the road completed.”

“People have really been patient with us,” Webb said. “We tried to work with them as best we can, but we do appreciate their patience. I think when it’s finished, it’ll be a nice asset for the county and it’d be nice for the community as well.”