160 turn out to peek at designs for I-30

At 3rd meeting, property owners relieved to see project won’t gobble up land

More than 160 people got a first glimpse Thursday evening at what the Interstate 30 corridor through Little Rock and North Little Rock might look like if it is widened from six lanes to eight or even 10 lanes.

And what was important to many attending a public meeting hosted by the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department was to see which properties might be lost in what is expected to be -- at a cost that could approach $450 million -- the most expensive project the department has ever undertaken.

Several of the attendees were pleased to learn the project will probably take up less property than they feared.

"I thought it would be in my front yard," said Mary Turner, 57, who has lived for 30 years in what once was her grandmother's house on Vance Street in a tight-knit neighborhood abutting the point where I-30 and Interstate 630 come together. "I feel better knowing they may not take my house."

One of her neighbors, Darryl Thomas, 27, said he is "comfortable with the plan so far, but I don't want to get my hopes up too much."

He, too, lives in a house that his grandmother once owned before passing it down to his mother, who in turn passed it along to him.

"I like my neighborhood," he added. "It would be about like losing family if anything happened to it."

They commented after peering closely at one of the three 25-foot photographic murals of the entire corridor in three different configurations:

• Eight lanes with three main lanes and one collector-distributor lane in each direction.

• Ten lanes with three main lanes and two collector-distributor lanes in each direction.

• Ten lanes with five main lanes in each direction.

The meeting was the third that consultants for the Highway Department have hosted as they develop a plan to ease congestion and vet all options as part of a federally mandated review of the entire corridor, a process that includes factoring in social, environmental and economic factors before coming up with a final design.

Jerry Holder, who is an executive at the Garver engineering firm and was hired to manage the Highway Department's $1.8 billion Connecting Arkansas program, said the people attending the hearing are getting more knowledgeable about the project as it moves along.

"They understand the drawings a lot better," he said. "They're asking good questions. They are very well educated in the process."

The information available at Thursday's meeting, held at Friendly Chapel Church of the Nazarene in North Little Rock near the foot of the I-30 bridge over the Arkansas River, included the eight latest alternatives eliminated from what began as 43 options to ease congestion and improve access through the 6.7-mile area under study.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette last month reported one of the options eliminated: refurbishing the Arkansas River bridge. Officials said it would be more cost-effective to replace the bridge instead.

Among the other options eliminated in the second screening was building a new bridge at Chester Street in Little Rock, the idea being that it would draw traffic away from the I-30 corridor and eliminate the need to make large-scale improvements.

But traffic modeling found a new bridge at most would divert 3.5 percent of the traffic in the corridor, which is expected to reach 165,000 vehicles daily by 2040. Add to that its cost -- $80 million to $100 million -- and the fact that it is a city street to which the state can't devote money, plus the fact that local governments had not committed any money to building it, made it a nonstarter, Holder said.

The latest screening also eliminated commuter rail and light rail as options at this time. Commuter rail isn't in the short-range or long-range plans of Central Arkansas Transit Authority, which operates transit in central Arkansas. Light rail isn't in its short-range plan, either.

Light rail would have a daily ridership of only 6,500 by 2040, according to planning studies, Holder said. "It's not something that's viable right now."

But Lawrence Finn of North Little Rock, a member of the CATA board of directors, said eliminating significant transit options from consideration was shortsighted, calling the likely widening of the corridor a "done deal."

Improving the corridor is a short-term solution because it only will attract more traffic and become congested again, he said. "I don't think that is a meaningful solution."

Congestion-management tools also were eliminated. They included high-occupancy vehicle lanes, toll lanes and reversible lanes. Some jurisdictions allow vehicles at certain times to drive on shoulders, which engineers deemed unsafe and would hamper emergency response to traffic crashes since emergency vehicles are the only ones allowed on shoulders now.

The preliminary plans continue to hold out the possibility of allowing buses to drive on the shoulder during peak traffic times.

Robin Loucks, president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association, came away pleased with how the preliminary plans avoid sensitive historic areas of downtown.

"I'm amazed they're not tearing down," she said. "They have been very thoughtful and have paid attention to what citizen input has suggested."

Metro on 01/30/2015

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