LITTLE ROCK — When a long section of U.S. 63 was officially designated as future Interstate 555 about 10 years ago, northeast Arkansas boosters thought the future would be here by now.
But as it became clear at a meeting of the Arkansas Highway Commission in Jonesboro last week, the future hasn’t arrived yet.
The 49 miles of U.S. 63 from Jonesboro to Interstate 55 is built to interstate standards, meaning access to the four-lane divided highway is controlled through a series of interchanges — clearly delineated entrance and exit ramps — that were constructed over the past 44 years.
A wrinkle in the I-555 plan is a 5-mile section of U.S. 63 between Payneway and Marked Tree in Poinsett County. It crosses the southern portion of the St. Francis Sunken Lands Wildlife Management Area, a 26,000-acre “island” of bottomland and hardwood forest in northeast Arkansas, according to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. The “sunken lands” resulted from the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812.
Within the 5 miles is also a floodway, a flat area adjacent to the St. Francis River and prone to flooding.
With no other crossing nearby, farmers in the area have no option but to use that section of U.S. 63 to drive their harvest loads into Marked Tree, which is home to cotton gins and warehouses, and grain elevators that can process and store harvested crops.
But once U.S. 63 is designated an interstate, farmers will no longer be able to use any part of it for trucking their crops. Federal law bans farm vehicles, such as cotton-module trucks, from interstate travel because of their size, the number of axles and the spacing between the axles, said Randy Ort, a spokesman for the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department.
For farm vehicles to cross the flood plain elsewhere, they would have to take circuitous routes up to Lake City in Craighead County to the north and back down, or almost to Birdeye in Cross County to the south and back up. Both routes, locals say, could add 90 miles to a trip.
Last week, the Arkansas Highway Commission held one of its regular meetings in Jonesboro, where the commission highlighted its work in the region and heard from several local officials who pressed the commission to convert U.S. 63 to I-555.
“That interstate designation will put northeast Arkansas on the map,” said Ed Way, a Liberty Bank executive who is the outgoing chairman of the Jonesboro Regional Chamber of Commerce. “The first thing any [company considering locating to the region] asks is, ‘Are you located on an interstate?’ or ‘How far are you from an interstate?’”
Other local leaders said they persuaded companies to locate in the region, in part, on the promise that I-555 would be a reality in the not-so-distant future.
“It is an unfulfilled commitment we feel like we have worked very hard on for 15 years,” Mike Cameron, a local contractor, told the commission.
Big companies in the area include Nestle USA and Quad/Graphics Inc., each employing about 700 people; Frito-Lay Inc. and Hytrol Conveyor Co., both of which boast more than 500 employees; and other companies, like Riceland Foods, that employ 300 or so people each.
“Existing industries have been depending on that promise,” Cameron said of the interstate designation.
But agriculture remains a significant presence in the region, which local leaders acknowledge.
Craighead County is second only to Mississippi County in cotton production in Arkansas, and ranks ninth in rice production, according to Matt King, an agriculture economist with the Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation. Poinsett County is the second-largest producer of rice in the state, he said.
Together, the two counties produce about 200,000 bales of cotton and 30 million bushels of rice, corn and soybeans, King said.
Much of that production winds up in Marked Tree at harvest time. As many as 5,000 farm vehicles travel U.S. 63 between Payneway and Marked Tree every year, mostly during harvests, Ort said. Local leaders said they didn’t want to hurt the farmers.
“That 90-mile detour is something that farmers don’t need to endure,” Cameron said.
The Highway Department has a solution to the problem: build a two-lane frontage road alongside U.S. 63. The sticking point is the price tag: An estimated $25 million, primarily because a 1.8-mile section would have to be elevated to cross the floodway.
The Highway Commission has chosen to focus on other priorities in the region, which include widening Arkansas 18 between Blytheville and Jonesboro, and widening Arkansas 226 between Jonesboro and U.S. 67, which would give the region a four-lane route to central Arkansas. Last week, the commission awarded a $37.8 million contract to widen another section of that route. Two projects already are under way on the highway, and more are planned.
No money for an I-555 frontage road was in the latest statewide transportation improvement plan.
John Ed Regenold of Armorel in Mississippi County, a commission member from the area, said that contrary to statements by others, he supported I-555, but he noted that it is currently a four-lane highway, which is safer than a two-lane road. He prefers concentrating agency resources on converting other two-lane roads into safer four-lane highways, he said. State highway officials note that nearly $250 million has been invested on U.S. 63 between Jonesboro and I-55 to date.
But the region balked at state highway officials’ decision to shift a leftover earmark of about $3 million to construction of a frontage road along U.S. 63 in Marked Tree. That would allow farm vehicles to avoid having to negotiate downtown Marked Tree.
Instead, the commission voted Tuesday to spend that money on engineering and design for the longer twolane frontage road between Payneway and Marked Tree, which local officials say helps keep the bigger project moving forward.
“This project is very important to the farming community in Poinsett County and Craighead County,” said Ritter Arnold of Marked Tree, who farms wheat, corn, rice and soybeans in the area.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/16/2012