FAYETTEVILLE -- The end is in sight.
Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department officials expect to wrap up work this summer on the final 2-mile section of Crossover Road between Joyce Boulevard and the northern city limit.
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Go to iDriveArkansas.com for more information about ongoing and upcoming Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department projects.
Source: Staff Report
The project is the third leg of a more than 10-year process on the east side of town.
Once the section of Crossover Road, also known as Arkansas 265, is complete, drivers will have two lanes in either direction from Huntsville Road in south Fayetteville to Randall Wobbe Lane in north Springdale.
"There's been so much growth on the east side of town here in Fayetteville and in Springdale," Bashar Qedan, assistant resident engineer with the highway department's Fayetteville office, said Thursday. "Traffic just kept building up.
"The road that was there before -- the two lanes -- just could not keep up with the demand. This is really a needed project, and we are very happy to see it almost complete."
Crossover Road construction hasn't come without hiccups.
The first section to be widened, between Huntsville Road and Mission Boulevard, was completed in 2003.
It took the city and highway department another nine years to start on the second section between Mission and Joyce boulevards. That section was completed in June 2014 through a $12.6 million contract with Nabholz Construction. The city and state split costs evenly.
Residents initially complained about plans for a median in the middle of the road rather than a continuous center turn lane.
"We had multiple people question the boulevard cross section and say they couldn't get to their property and it's not going to be safe," City Engineer Chris Brown said. "But, what we've found so far is it's worked really, really well."
"It's going to be beautiful and it's going to do exactly what we had envisioned it doing: moving traffic much more safely and really managing the access through there much better than a five-lane section would have," Brown added.
The highway department is covering 100 percent of the $9.5 million construction contract with Decco Contractors-Paving for the final section of the project.
Adrienna Young, a server at Meiji Japanese Cuisine, 3878 N. Crossover Road, said construction has caused occasional headaches for customers, especially about 5 p.m.
The construction at one point cut power to the restaurant. "It'll be helpful for traffic once it's over," Young said
Ron Cox, executive director of the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks, said, "Obviously, you'd like to snap your fingers and there's a four-lane road out there and it's done, but we all have to go through the construction process.
"I look forward to it being completed. It's really going to be beneficial to the area."
The city will plant trees this fall in the median, Brown said.
The highway department estimates 13,000-15,000 cars travel Crossover daily. Brown said the project will ease congestion on other north-south corridors, such as College Avenue and Interstate 49.
"We always say that traffic is a lot like water flow in pipes," Brown added. "You open up a new pipe, and the water's going to start flowing through that until it gets to a certain point and it kind of stabilizes.
"So, that's what we'll see with Crossover. We'll see a shift in traffic patterns and a shift in people's driving behavior until it kind of balances itself out."
Qedan said highway officials plan to extend Arkansas 265 north from Arkansas 264, through Bethel Heights and Lowell to the northeast side of Rogers as federal funding becomes available.
He said, for now in Washington County, the department will focus on other projects, including the Huntsville Road widening in southeast Fayetteville, the Porter Road bridge on I-49 and the first section of the U.S. 412 Bypass in northern Springdale.
NW News on 05/24/2015