The population in South Mississippi is growing fast. Can the roads keep up?

Every morning, the two-lane roads in Harrison County start filling up.

Cars pack bumper-to-bumper at stoplights. Brakes screech. And another day of traffic begins in South Mississippi’s countryside.

“There used to be ways we could get around it,” Angel Kibler-Middleton, a county constable, said of the congestion exasperating drivers north of Interstate 10. “Now, every single road to go around is backed up,” she said. “There is no escape.”

The frustration is one sign of the growing pains emerging on the Mississippi Coast, where the population is rising faster than almost anywhere in the state. There was a time when neighbors here rode horses down rural highways, and might have waved to a few passing cars. But now the surge of newcomers is forcing state leaders to expand construction projects.

On Interstate 10 in Harrison County, the Mississippi Department of Transportation is in the midst of a $155 million project that will widen several miles from four to six lanes to fit more cars. A busy section of Highway 49 is also getting two new lanes. To the east, construction crews are enlarging Highway 57 between the interstate and Vancleave. And a project to expand Highway 90 between Ocean Springs and Gautier will begin in the next few years.

The growth is creating more jobs and tax dollars across the region. It is also posing new challenges.

“The more people you add to these little areas that aren’t used to seeing this kind of traffic, that’s concerning for a lot of residents,” said State Sen. Jeremy England, who represents part of Jackson County and serves on the Senate Highways and Transportation Committee. “Their concern is, look, we’ve got small roads and not a lot of roads to get from the city to where we are. What is being done?”

Now, after a recent funding boost, the state transportation department says more widening projects are coming.

“Traffic is continuing to increase,” said Billy Owen, an MDOT district engineer who oversees South Mississippi. “Those projects have been needed for a long time.”

MS Coast growth creates traffic challenge

Transportation leaders say the issue is crucial: Census data shows the Gulfport-Biloxi metro has grown by nearly 11 percent, or more than 40,000 people, in the last decade. Its population is expected to keep rising.

More than 15 million tourists also swarmed the region last year. That number is increasing too, and many of the visitors arrive and get around in cars.

The forces are creating a kind of frenzy. Mississippi Coast drivers spent 33 hours on average stuck in traffic in 2024, according to data from Texas A&M University, which also shows the delays were the longest of any point in the past decade. Future road widening projects could draw funding from a new gas tax that state leaders passed this year. And the demand for more and bigger roads in growing areas of Mississippi is so great that contractors say they are hiring and recruiting more than ever and increasingly competing for local projects with road builders from other states.

Much of the Mississippi Coast’s growth since Hurricane Katrina has spread north of the interstate, where insurance is cheaper and land is still dominated by rural roads. But the region’s major employers — the casinos, hospitals and military bases — are on the coastline.

“Every morning, people are trying to get from the north to the south,” said Kenneth Yarrow, executive director of the Gulf Regional Planning Commission. “That’s just going to further intensify.”

The pattern could create more demand in the future for larger roads that run from north to south. County leaders say they are studying the issue closely and trying to be more proactive about upgrading infrastructure while they address already-congested areas.

“It’s very challenging,” said Nathan Barrett, president of the Harrison County Board of Supervisors. But he was optimistic: “I believe that we will catch up.”

Bigger roads planned across South MS

The trends are similar in other growing areas of the state. Randolph Cheek, president of the Mississippi Road Builders’ Association, said the state’s contractors are working faster and facing more competition these days, but also getting more opportunities. Cheek, for example, has hired five new employees in the last several weeks.

The biggest struggle is money. Until recently, MDOT’s revenue was flat and the agency was mostly focused on maintaining highways instead of building bigger roads. But a mix of federal and state funding after the pandemic is now fueling new construction. Transportation budgets are also getting a boost because drivers began paying three cents more per gallon at gas pumps this summer. The increase is the first stage of a nine-cent gas tax hike that state leaders passed earlier this year.

Owen, the MDOT district engineer, said the agency is already studying a future project that could widen I-10 in Jackson County, between Highway 57 and the Pascagoula River Bridge. State leaders eventually hope to expand the interstate to six lanes across the three coastal counties.

To big-city dwellers, the traffic might seem minor. But the growing backups at once-quiet intersections are jarring to many longtime rural residents.

Middleton, the constable, said she measured a recurring traffic jam on County Farm Road near West Harrison High School one morning and clocked the backup at more than a mile long. She has advocated strongly against the rise of dense new subdivisions nearby in part because she says the county must first update infrastructure enough to keep pace with the growing population.

The traffic has also brought some welcome benefits. “We don’t stop,” said Edna Giadrosich, who runs the family-owned JC’s Quick Serve just up the road from the high school. She had been busy since dawn with a surge of customers as the daily backup crept towards her corner convenience store again.

Giadrosich worries about runaway growth too. But business is good. She wants to expand the store’s parking lot.

She glanced out the window toward the gas pumps, where car after car kept pulling up.

“It’s just so much traffic,” she said as another customer walked in.

This story was originally published November 18, 2025 at 9:10 AM.