LITTLE ROCK — The North Belt Freeway, left for dead last month, was revived Wednesday by central Arkansas leaders reluctant to throw away years of planning for the $500 million interstate route in north Pulaski County.
The Metroplan board of directors voted to spend $6 million on right-of-way acquisition for the proposed route next year and $36 million within another four to seven years, and to request that the Arkansas Highway Commission commit to a new timeline that would have the 12.8-mile route constructed by 2025.
“They say they want it built,” said Jim McKenzie, the executive director of Metroplan, the long-range transportation planning agency for central Arkansas. “I will point out it is in the financially constrained long-range plans. So within the dollars that they said were available, the money’s there.
“It just needs to be spent now” to prevent houses from being built in the right of way, which would make “it impossible to ever get [the freeway] built,” he said.
Wednesday’s action adds some heft to a long-standing board policy to build the route from U.S. 67/167 south of Jacksonville to the Interstate 40/Interstate 430 interchange. But the project has been dormant for years.
Grave doubts about its future arose in March when state highway officials allotted no money for the route in the department’s latest statewide transportation improvement plan, which lists every project it will work on in the state for the years 2013-16.
At a retreat this spring in Heber Springs, the Metroplan board discussed the future of the route while awaiting a staff analysis of the project’s pros and cons, which the board received Wednesday.
A price tag of as much as $500 million remains a hurdle to overcome. The project was on the list of a highwayimprovement plan that the Legislature adopted in 1991. Its price tag then was $55 million. Less than 10 years later, one part of the route — from U.S. 67/167 east to I-40 — was built for $65 million.
The analysis concluded that not building the route would increase traffic volume, congestion and safety concerns on U.S. 67/167, I-40, Arkansas 107 and other roads in the area; continue to restrict access from homes in the northeast part of the county to the jobs and services available in Maumelle and west Little Rock; and leave the region without the circumferential freeway system common in other urban areas.
Further, if the route isn’t built, maintaining the existing and increasingly congested road system would be more difficult and costly, the analysis said. Also, vehicle operating costs would rise because of substandard roads, costs associated with congestion would increase, travel time for emergency services would increase and accessibility between the northeast and northwest parts of the county would be hampered, according to the analysis.
Options such as building the route as a largely locally funded arterial route or building it in segments held little appeal in the analysis.
Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher provided the most ardent defense of the full project, saying if it isn’t built, “we would be shortchanging ourselves for generations to come.”
Without the North Belt Freeway, the mayor said, he feared that north Pulaski County would “stagnate and choke off economic development. If we make a decision to can it, we’re going to regret it later on.”
Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola agreed that dumping the route would be “shortsighted.”
“We’re shortchanging the long-range vision,” he said. “I hate to say not to do this just because we don’t know where the money is coming from” now when future boards may have different circumstances that the current board cannot predict.
Conway Mayor Tab Townsell viewed completion of the route as being part of positioning the region in the best way to take advantage of economic opportunities. Companies, he said, want to know how long it takes potential employees to commute. The easier to get around the region, the better situated the region will be, he said.
“I see it as a jobs issue,” he said.
Not all board members were convinced that Wednesday’s action would cement the decision to finally build the route.
“It all looks good on paper,” said Sherwood Mayor Virginia Hillman, whose city has been locked in litigation with developers who want to build where the route is planned. “But we still don’t have a commitment to build the thing.”
Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines said he didn’t care one way or another whether it is in the region’s long-range plans.
“I don’t believe it will ever get built,” he said, noting that only once in 60 years had the board even thought the money might be available. “I don’t see that we’re going to have any money to do it.”
North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays said the route itself, given that much of it goes through Camp Robinson or wetlands, holds little immediate economic development prospects. And keeping the project in long-range plans stifles other development plans and invites more litigation, he said.
Scott Bennett, the director of the Arkansas Department of Highway and Transportation, immediately wanted to know what central Arkansas road project in the transportation improvement program the board wanted to tap to get the $6 million. McKenzie responded by saying it could be taken from the $9 million earmarked to widen U.S. 64 between Beebe and Vilonia.
But Bennett said he believes that the route is too expensive. Building the North Belt Freeway — just one project — would gobble up close to half of the money the department would have available for discretionary spending for the entire state, he said.
“I don’t know if the [highway] commission will commit to that,” he said.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/31/2012