As the Mississippi Gulf Coast grows, traffic is surging. How will that change the roads?

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 pr