 What makes for excellence in heart care? It starts with one of the most amazing teams of heart surgeons and cardiologists that I've seen assembled under one roof and the region's leading technology in a new $40 million facility. This is the nationally recognized Heart and Vascular Institute of Eastern Kentucky at Pikeville Medical Center. On Monday, March 13, the Pikeville City Commission awarded over $40,000 to Palmer Engineering to insert a new access road from Hambly Boulevard across Hibbard Street. The purpose of this new road is to allow traffic to more easily funnel into Pikeville Medical Center directly from Hambly. It is unknown how long construction will take. There's an intersection now that comes from Hambly to Hibbard Street around Wulana Court. That intersection kind of creates a T there or a four-way intersection. And we're going to relocate that entrance. We're going to relook at that intersection a little bit back toward Julius Avenue to create a new access point and close that other one. We've retained Palmer Engineering as a design firm to assist with the design of that intersection and how to align that street. As a result of the new road construction, the building next to PMC's Human Resources Office, formerly known as CarQuest, is currently being demolished. Once the road is built, emergency vehicles and city residents will have more accessibility to the hospital. There is PMC's HR office and then there's like an alley that goes through there or a parking area and then there's the CarQuest building. The CarQuest building is being demolished and the street will go through that area. And intersect, Park Street is behind the HR office and it'll intersect Park Street and then go out to River, I think it's called River Road, that's already a city street. So we're really just connecting Hamley Boulevard to another city street. That will provide direct access to PMC from Hamley Boulevard and we believe that it will take some pressure off the intersection of Hamley and Bayard Avenue as well as Bayard Avenue and the bypass on the other end of Bayard Avenue. Those intersections are both very busy. There's a lot of pedestrian traffic that goes through the intersection with Bayard and the bypass. So we're trying to alleviate some pressure from those two intersections and provide another route of interest to Pifal Medical Center. Reporting from Mountain Top News, I'm Nick Collum.