Metroplan sounds North Belt retreat

Construction dropped from plan

— Metroplan officials kicked plans for a North Belt Freeway farther down the road Wednesday in deciding to study a payment method for the project near term but dropping the project’s construction from their plans in the long term.

At the long-range transportation planning organization’s meeting Wednesday, state and local leaders committed to designing the highway and securing rightsof-way for its route in their 2030 transportation plan. In the short term, Metroplan will provide up to a third of the funding for a $750,000 study to determine the feasibility of charging a toll on the roadway. The state Highway and Transportation Department will provide the rest of the study’s funding. Metroplan, however, made no commitment to fund the highway’s construction. “To me, at this point, [North Belt] still is just a dream,” Sherwood Mayor Virginia Hillman said.

Talks of a freeway connecting U.S. 67/167 south of Jacksonville to the Interstate 40 and Interstate 430 interchange have been in flux in recent months as transportation officials decided whether to commit to funding the project in their future improvement plans due in September. Wednesday’s outcome signified progress, Metroplan Executive Director Jim McKenzie said.

“We’re not as far along as anyone would like, but it was some forward progress,” McKenzie said.

Mayors and county judges from central Arkansas on the Metroplan board agreed that they would not have the money to help the state fund immediate design and property purchases. But faced with the option of taking the project off their longterm plan entirely, Metroplan leaders decided some commitment was better than ending the North Belt conversation entirely.

Hillman said she and her constituents would have liked Metroplan to commit financially to North Belt. Many Metroplan officials say North Belt would provide better access to northern Pulaski County communities such as Sherwood.

“I just can’t see that we made any progress,” she said.

Cabot Mayor Bill Cypert said he wanted to move the project off the long-range plan because other needs were taking a back seat.

“We have urgent needs that are not being fulfilled in the short and intermediate term if we keep talking about this project,” he said.

But a motion by Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines to keep the preservation of the highway’s planned corridor and the purchase of rights of way in the long-range plan kept the route alive.

Villines said the decision moves the project forward when it was subject to removal from plans altogether.

“I think it’s a baby step and the option is to take it off life support and kill it,” Villines told other Metroplan members while arguing to keep some aspect of the project in their long-term plan.

Most of the money freed up by leaving the project’s construction off the plan would fund $149 million in interstate and highway projects, with money left over for road maintenance, McKenzie said.

Villines’ motion passed without opposition, but now both Metroplan and the state Highway Department will have to find funding for design and right-of-way purchases.

The North Belt made its initial appearance on longrange plans for central Arkansas in 1947 and has been included ever since. But the project didn’t become part of the Highway Department’s improvement plan until 1991. Then a state effort to build the project with federal funding in 1994 was dashed when Metroplan declined to put the project in its long-range transportation plan.

The latest effort for a North Belt route began in 2004.

In the past couple of months, Metroplan and the Highway Department have each taken right-of-way purchasing efforts out of their transportation improvement plans for 2013-2016.

Their transportation improvement plans have to be congruent, according to federal regulations.

While the board has committed only to help study whether the freeway could be a toll road, the clock is still ticking on the project.

McKenzie said Metroplan and the Highway Department could see costs double from their current estimate to around $600 million by 2025.

In that time, taxpayer dollars could lose their purchasing power as the costs of road construction rise.

But Highway Commissioner Tom Schueck, 71, of Little Rock said central Arkansans decades from now will be “proud of what was accomplished” Wednesday because North Belt will get done.

“It may be after I’m gone, but the road will be built.”

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 08/02/2012

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