Over the past few years, south Main Street in Little Rock has been populated with quirky businesses and homegrown revitalization efforts seeking to draw people from surrounding residential neighborhoods to make the street a bustling area.
Little Rock officials are proposing to aid those efforts by slowing down traffic and making the street safer for people on foot, on bicycles and in cars. Public Works Department staff held two public hearings Thursday to gauge support and gather comments about the plan.
The plan calls for $460,000 in state Highway and Transportation Department money to repave Main Street from Interstate 630 to Roosevelt Road. The city’s proposal to restripe the road when that work is done would reduce the number of vehicle-travel lanes from four to two, and add two bicycle lanes and a dedicated center turn lane.
“The road will be repaved from Roosevelt Road to the I-630 regardless of how it is restriped afterward,” said Ronnie Loe, assistant director of the city Public Works Department. “We’re holding these meetings to get public input and comments on how the road should be restriped after that.”
The city will take comments for the next week before deciding on the logistics of the plan.
Once those are finalized, the Highway Department will bid out the project and oversee the work, which is projected to start this summer and take a few weeks to complete.
The funding came from a new program at the Highway Department in which a $20 million fund is used for road projects in cities all over the state. Once a project is bid out, the city involved will have to pay 10 percent of that cost.
Public Works staff said they were approached by residents and business owners in the south Main Street area with the idea for the project. City staff submitted the proposal to the state Highway Department, which then selected it as one of dozens of projects funded throughout Arkansas.
Department officials said the projects were chosen based on merit and whether the work could be started relatively quickly.
Most people at the meetings said they were excited that the street could become safer to cross and park on if the city’s plan moved forward.
The Downtown Little Rock Partnership held a pedestrian safety event at 15th and Main streets last month, identifying the corner as one of the worst in the city for pedestrians. Several business owners spoke at that conference about how hard it is for customers to safely cross the street and, in some cases, for employees to do their jobs.
The Root Cafe, for example, has an employee make a run across the street to Boulevard Bread Co. to pick up the restaurant’s daily bread needs. The task often involves trying to push a shopping cart brimming with baguettes and rolls across four lanes of traffic without a traffic signal, owner Jack Sundell said.
At least one resident spoke in opposition of the plan: Tom Davis, who lives in the 2300 block of Main Street.
“I’m not against the plan for the part of Main Street where all of the businesses are, but it makes no sense where I live,” he said. “I have a hard enough time getting out of my driveway now without putting more cars in one lane and adding that I’ll have to be watching out for bicyclists, too. I want them to move the gateway … the starting point, and save taxpayer money.”
Davis said he thought the plan would make it more dangerous to drive up the hill from Roosevelt Road north on Main Street.
Resident Joe Phillips, who lives in the 2400 block of Main Street, disagreed, saying he travels only by bicycle.
“A lot of times I don’t feel safe on Main Street, but if there were a bike lane I would feel a lot safer,” he said. “If they’re already going to repave the road regardless, it doesn’t seem like either option would be an issue of money or saving money. It would be the same cost.”
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 05/10/2013