On Jan. 19, the Little Rock Board of Directors deferred action on a resolution requesting that Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department reconsider their plans to redo the I-30 bridge and expand I-30 through Little Rock.
I was surprised that such a mild response could not pass, but then I'm having trouble believing that anyone actually concerned with the welfare of the city is not running around with his hair on fire yelling "No!" The current plan represents a serious threat to the revitalization of our downtown for modest, if any, benefits. It is also at least a decade behind the times.
When I read that the 30 Crossing plan called for ripping out the trolley line between the River Market and Heifer International, I understood the thinking behind the proposal. The traffic engineers were given a set of goals involving a bridge, traffic flow and safety, and those were the only goals being addressed.
Frankly, I see traffic flow as a side issue when compared to social and economic concerns. For whom, after all, do we build roads?
In his informative and insightful Street Smart, Samuel Schwartz, former traffic commissioner of New York City, observes that our interstate highway system is great for moving people and goods between cities, but within cities is often a disaster. This is certainly the situation in Little Rock where I-30 and I-630 have locked in social and economic patterns detrimental to the health of the city for years. More recent interstate highway construction in central Arkansas consists mostly of six-lane roads to communities on the outskirts of Pulaski County facilitating flight out of Little Rock.
Now we have a plan for promoting interstate and truck traffic through the I-30 corridor that will add to our problems. Traffic already has interstate routes going both north and south of the city. Providing a more attractive I-30 corridor would predictably induce more interstate traffic to choose that route and actually increase congestion through the area. This phenomenon has been documented in other locations around the country. Raising the speed from 60 to 70 mph over a less than seven-mile route would save under one minute.
Our planners are assuming a continuing increase in vehicle miles driven. It appears that vehicle miles driven peaked around 2005 and that traffic miles are dropping, not increasing. It is fairly clear that the younger generation presently entering the job market is driving less and puts lower values on cars than did preceding generations. Given the timeline of the I-30 project, we should be planning for those people, not the generations leaving the scene.
Consider what is happening in downtown Little Rock: The River Market and Main Street areas are the core of the city's artistic, creative, entertainment and tourist life. Real estate consolidation for the Tech Park is complete with the city of Little Rock investing millions of dollars in the effort. One of the reasons the Tech Park is going into its expensive downtown location, rather than cheaper space further west, is that the young entrepreneurs and talent the park seeks to attract want to work, live and play in the same area. Adding to the "talent hub" feel, Inuvo Inc. and PrivacyStar are moving into the Museum Center in the River Market with a forecast job count of 200.
They would be how many feet from an expanded I-30? A 10-lane I-30 would take how many city blocks of free market residential or commercial space? What about access? These issues should be of top concern in our planning.
The exciting changes in downtown Little Rock parallel changes occurring all over the country, and in many other cities revitalization is leading people to turn limited-access highways into boulevards, not expand them. Architect Tom Fennell has come up with a plan to do just that, and his proposal would have about the same economic impact on the area as the Highway Department plan. (Notice that, Board of Directors.) That's the way we should be thinking.
In trying to get some sense of the implications of the plan to expand I-30, I recently spent an hour or so driving over and under I-30.
I finally found a route to Hanger Hill, historically part of the Quapaw Quarter, now cut off. My excursion left me with the impression that travel across the I-30 corridor has never been a high priority for our road builders. That the trolley line has been declared safe in response to public outrage does not alter my initial thoughts about the mindset of the planning team.
My personal belief at the moment is that we should patch up the bridge, but use remaining funds to improve the crossings of I-30. A boulevard would be lovely.
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Roger A. Webb has been a resident of Little Rock since 1974 and is a retired UALR professor of Psychology.
Editorial on 01/25/2016