FAYETTEVILLE — If central Arkansas planners and local governments want to see construction start soon on the $500 million North Belt Freeway in northern Pulaski County, they need to put up a chunk of the money, the Arkansas Highway Commission decided Tuesday.
“What skin in the game can you bring?” commission Chairman Madison Murphy asked a central Arkansas planning group.
Financial partnerships with local governments have worked well to speed up highway construction projects in Northwest Arkansas and other parts of the state, said state Highway and Transportation Department Director Scott Bennett.
Increasingly, road-building funding for those local partnerships has been a 50-50 split, he said. But such partnerships haven’t been used much in the central part of the state, Bennett said.
Tuesday’s Highway Commission meeting was held in Fayetteville on the University of Arkansas campus, part of an effort to take the meetings and road issues to residents outside Little Rock.
Bennett’s comments came in response to a request from the Metroplan board of directors, which asked the commission Tuesday to commit to a 2025 deadline for building the 12.8-mile, interstate-style freeway. Metroplan plans for growth in central Arkansas, particularly in Pulaski, Faulkner, Saline and Lonoke counties.
Metroplan Executive Director Jim McKenzie said his group is looking for the 2025 commitment, or if not, “the declaration that you just can’t do it for whatever reason. Ev- eryone recognizes the shortfall-funding issue.”
In March, state highway officials didn’t include any money for the North Belt project in the department’s latest statewide transportation improvement plan for 2013-16, raising doubts that the long-dormant project could survive.
The Metroplan directors voted in May to spend $6 million on right-of-way acquisition for the route over the next year. It also asked for the 2025 construction deadline, which highway officials said would require that spending begin right away.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Murphy chided Metroplan for asking for the deadline without offering financial help. Highway officials also noted that Metroplan didn’t say it would support a longstanding idea to build the freeway as a toll road. Murphy estimated that a toll road would leave a smaller funding gap for the state and local governments to fill — about $180 million.
“I’m trying to find a way to keep this project alive so it can be built,” Murphy told McKenzie. “I’m really tired of the blame game. If we’re going to work together, that should start now.”
Highway Commissioner Tom Schueck of Little Rock agreed. “If Metroplan could come up with some way to partner, I would [make a motion] to move forward in some form or fashion. I don’t want anyone to say this commission killed the North Belt, because we didn’t.”
Highway commissioners decided Tuesday to draft a letter to Metroplan asking for central Arkansas counties and cities to help fund the North Belt and to commit to the toll-road idea.
McKenzie told highway commissioners that he would take the proposal to his board. He described members as “skeptical but amenable” to the toll-road idea. Later Tuesday, McKenzie said a new toll-road study would have to be done for his board to consider making the route a tollway.
“There will have to be some new revenue source because the local governments don’t have tens of millions of unused dollars sitting around looking for somewhere to go,” McKenzie said.
About sharing the cost of building the North Belt, McKenzie told highway commissioners that “partnering [on the costs] is new” to the Metroplan board. “They thought that the state was committed to building it.”
McKenzie said it would be hard to say more about the proposal until the Metroplan board receives the Highway Department’s proposal. Metroplan’s board, made up of the region’s county judges and mayors, meets next on June 27.
“Until it’s dead, it’s still alive,” McKenzie said of the North Belt project.
The freeway would run from U.S. 67/167 south of Jacksonville to the interchange of Interstate 40/Interstate 430. One of the road’s purposes would be to accommodate workers from across central Arkansas traveling to jobs in Maumelle and west Little Rock. It also is part of a planned central beltway.
When told of the commission’s statements, Maumelle Mayor Mike Watson, president of Metroplan’s board, said Tuesday afternoon that tolling could be a “viable option” to finally move forward with the route.
“I do think it’s a possible way to fund it,” Watson said. “The Highway Department has needs all over the state, and they can’t put all of their money into central Arkansas.
“I’m willing to work with them in any way we can to try to make it happen,” Watson added. “If they think that’s a viable option, we need to look at it.”
Deciding what to do with the North Belt project is especially important in Sherwood, which has been in litigation with developers who want to build along the planned route that crosses the northern part of the city.
“Our primary development is kind of held up at this point,” Sherwood Mayor Virginia Hillman said. “We do have more skin in the game. We have a lot on the table here.
“It needs to either be built or free us up and let us move on,” she said.
Long-range transportation plans for central Arkansas have included the North Belt project since 1947, McKenzie has said. The project was included as part of the Highway Department’s 1991 highway-improvement program.
The department chose a route that received federal approval in 1994, but that approval lapsed after the Metroplan board declined to put the route on its long-range transportation plan. An effort to select the latest route started in 2004.
The longer the North Belt project takes, the more the cost escalates. When approved as part of the highway-improvement plan in 1991, the North Belt’s projected cost was $55 million, almost one-tenth of the total today.
The North Belt project’s eastern leg — Interstate 440 — opened in 2003 from U.S. 67/167 east to I-40 at a cost of $70 million.
Also at Tuesday’s meeting:
Commissioners agreed to consider raising speed limits from 55 mph to 60 mph on certain undivided four- and five-lane roadways. State engineers would have to study safety issues before speed limits would rise on any of those roads.
Brochures were distributed outlining the benefits of Proposed Constitutional Amendment No. 1 on the Nov. 6 ballot, which would levy a temporary half percent sales tax to pay for fourlane highway construction and improvement bonds, along with money for road improvements in cities and counties. The tax would authorize $1.3 billion in road improvements. It would expire in 10 years and would not be levied on groceries or medicines.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 06/13/2012