MDOT: $194M Ripley Bypass on Budget, on Pace for Summer 2028 Completion
RIPLEY, Miss. — The largest road project Tippah County has seen in a generation is right on track.
The Mississippi Department of Transportation says construction of the Ripley Bypass — a roughly 10-mile, four-lane corridor that will carry Highway 15 around the city — is on budget and on schedule, with completion expected in summer 2028. The $194 million project is funded entirely with state highway capacity dollars appropriated by the Mississippi Legislature.
Work began in summer 2024, and MDOT project engineer Tyler Fields said crews could finish ahead of schedule if the weather keeps cooperating. A dry winter in 2025-26 allowed major progress on bridge construction through the summer.
Long time coming
The bypass was first discussed in the early 2000s and has been in the planning stages since 2009. Funding shortages kept pushing the letting date back until the Legislature revitalized the highway capacity program, and record-high MDOT funding years in 2023 and 2024 finally got the project moving.
The need is no secret to anyone who drives Ripley. Mississippi Highway 15 — the state’s longest highway — doubles as the city’s main street, carrying between 9,000 and 13,000 vehicles a day according to 2024 traffic counts, including a heavy volume of 18-wheeler truck traffic.
“There’s heavy traffic in the area, and people want relief,” Fields said.
What is being built
The new corridor will run about 10 miles, with an approximately one-mile MS 2 connector road to Blue Mountain. The project includes 11 bridges spanning creeks and local roads, plus box culverts in other locations. The current section will connect to MS 4 and eventually Industrial Road north of Ripley, with future sections tying back to MS 15 at Falkner.
Building a four-lane highway through rural hills means moving a mountain of dirt — nearly 6 million cubic yards of earthwork, plus 800,000 cubic yards of borrow material secured from local property owners after soil testing.
Value-engineering has already paid off. While working on the MS 15 and MS 2 interchange, the team ended up with 250,000 cubic yards of material slated to be hauled off the right of way. Instead, it was reused as unclassified fill elsewhere on the project.
“If we had to dispose of the materials, we would have had to haul it off and bring in other materials for the project,” Fields said. He estimates the move saved about $2 million.
Local jobs, local growth
The general contractor is W.G. Yates & Sons Construction of Philadelphia, Mississippi — one of the largest construction companies in the country, with more than 6,200 employees. Fields said the company has hired many local workers for the job.
“They’ve been great to work with,” Fields said. “Yates has been very detail oriented, provides updates regularly, are very responsive to issues we have, and strive to handle problems promptly at the project level before they become a larger issue.”
State officials say the bypass will serve as a linchpin for economic development in the area, boosting existing businesses and helping industry get to and through Ripley and Tippah County — home to a large Ashley Furniture Industries distribution center and Big M Transportation’s logistics operation.
When finished, the project will ease congestion by letting through traffic bypass Ripley entirely, while improving safety by giving trucks and local traffic designated areas.
Source: Construction News
