DRIVETIME MAHATMA

Upgrading U.S. 67/167 on horizon

Dear Mahatma: Have you driven U.S. 67/167 from Jacksonville to Cabot and beyond? It’s filled with potholes, cracks, patches and rough places. I heard they were going to widen it, but right now I would be satisfied if they would just fill the potholes and resurface.

Any plans to do anything at all? - Merle

Dear Merle: The Mahatma recently went this way on a drive to Batesville. There is plenty of work around Bald Knob, which is welcome, but your observation on the stretch from Jacksonville to Cabot is well taken.

When you refer to “they,” surely you mean the people at the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department. We pitched this to them (Them, title of a 1950s sci-fi movie about giant nuclear ants) and must now advise you to hold onto your hat.

Because, yes, there is work on the horizon.

And the horizon is way out there. Call it a 10-year construction sentence.

Here’s what they - Danny Straessle of the Highway Department - tell us.

Work will begin in the spring just north of the Main Street overpass in Jacksonville. It will end at the Arkansas 5 exit in Cabot. This is not “a simple asphalt overlay.” The highway is concrete. Where needed, the pavement will be replaced in sections 6 feet long and 12 feet wide, the latter being an entire lane width. Each of these sections will have a full depth replacement. Expect the project to be done by the end of summer. Work will normally be done from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. to lessen the effect on traffic.

There’s more.

Bids will be let in the summer to replace the Main Street and Redmond Road overpasses in Jacksonville. This work will be part of the widening of the highway to three lanes on each side. The project will start where the current three lanes narrow to two and will widen the stretch between the bridges.

This bridge-to-bridge extravaganza could take up to two years.

There’s more.

As the years go by, U.S.

67/167 will be widened from Main Street to Vandenberg Boulevard.

As more years go by, the highway will be widened from Vandenberg Boulevard to Arkansas 5.

Straessle respectfully asks for a shameless plug for IDrive Arkansas, the website that tells people about construction projects and road conditions. We respectfully agree to the plug, and wish all the best to those who commute from Cabot to Jacksonville to Little Rock over the next decade.

That last sentence sounded smug. All of us who live north of the river and work in downtown Little Rock will get our comeuppance when the Broadway Bridge is replaced. At last look, bids will be opened in about a month. Replacement will take from 18 months to two years.

Three highway bridges now span the river in Our Town. When that number turns into two bridges, and there is an accident on either one, we are toast.

Where does a guy buy a reliable used boat?

Mahatma@arkansasonline.com

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 01/25/2014

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