More than 1,400 comments on the proposed Interstate 30 corridor project through downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock were submitted by Friday's deadline, a reflection of the high interest in the proposal to remake the 6.7-mile corridor, including replacing the bridge over the Arkansas River.
The numbers are preliminary and it will take into next week to weed out duplicative comments, said Danny Straessle, a spokesman for the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department. The comments were generated since the department held its sixth public meeting on the project.
The first five public meetings on the project, dubbed 30 Crossing, drew about 800 comments, Straessle said. The total is the largest numbers of comments garnered by a road construction project in recent memory, he said.
A total of 402 comments were submitted on Friday alone, he said. That number almost matched the number of comments -- 408 -- the department received for the first public meeting held in November 2014.
The 1,400 comments were submitted as part of the sixth public hearing held on April 16 in North Little Rock, to solicit the public's views on refinements to the two alternatives that include thesix lanes with collector/distributor lanes, previously known as the 10-lane alternative, and an eight lane option.
Both of those options also include two separate alternatives for the interchange serving downtown Little Rock. One would reconfigure the interchange now at Cantrell Road. The other alternative would shift the interchange south and serve East Fourth and East Sixth streets as well as East Capitol Avenue. A "no-build" alternative also remains under consideration.
It was the second successive hearing in which the department extended the time to submit comments to 45 days. The comment period typically is limited to 15 days. The fifth public hearing in October yielded 282 comments.
The comments will be made part of the file being amassed for the environmental assessment under way for the project that is supposed to produce a preferred alternative and a "finding of no significant impact," by the Federal Highway Administration.
"Every comment will be read and evaluated and addressed in some form or fashion," Straessle said.
The department staff and consultants now are eliminating any duplicative comments. Some people may have submitted the same comments in writing or electronically to ensure their comments were filed, he said.
The alternatives are designed to address congestion, safety and aging and outdated infrastructure issues in the corridor stretching from Interstate 530 in Little Rock to Interstate 40 in North Little Rock. The project also includes a small section of I-40 between I-30 and U.S. 67/167, also in North Little Rock.
The corridor goes through heavily developed downtowns sectors of both cities. Both the corridor and the bridge, which carries 125,000 vehicles daily, were built 50 years ago.
The department has identified $631.7 million in state and federal funding for the project.
The latest round of comments included ones from entities or people who have expressed strong interest in the project, supporters and critics alike.
The city of Little Rock, wanting to protect its developing downtown on both sides of the interstate, used its comments to seek more changes to the six-lane with collector/distributor lanes alternative, based on a review by a consultant the city retained.
The alternative includes six through lanes on I-30 as it has now, but adds two lanes in each direction -- which are the collector/distributor lanes -- that would be separated from the main lanes and channel local traffic between North Little Rock and Little Rock at slower speeds.
The city wants, among other things, narrower collector-distributor lanes that are more like city streets to ensure traffic coming off the interstate slows down, the use of vertical retaining walls rather than slopes to narrow the footprint of the overall project and an addition to the "project purpose and need statement" to include preservation of the downtown community.
The city also wants wider bridges at East Sixth and East Ninth streets to accommodate "sustainable landscaping," high-tech lighting underneath the highway structure and to strike a proposal to eliminate on-street parking on East Fourth and East Sixth, saying it wasn't needed now.
"Based on our assessment, it is our determination that the proposed alternatives need further improvement so that they will not place a substantially negative impact on downtown; and, at a minimum those alternatives must include the elements described above if a 'finding of no significant impact' is to be issued," the city's comment letter said.
The letter was signed by Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola and City Manager Bruce Moore.
The staff of Metroplan, the long-range transportation planning agency for central Arkansas, submitted a 10-page letter that largely took issue with the analysis and traffic simulations the department used to develop its alternatives.
Among other things, the agency staff said its own analysis continues to show a need for another river crossing, often termed the Chester Street bridge, to provide additional options to go into and out of downtown.
Some comments were limited to expressing support for one particular alternative. Several downtown organizations, including the Downtown Little Rock Partnership and the Central Arkansas Library System, have endorsed a version of the six-lane plus collector/distributor lanes, or the "split-diamond interchange," that includes the new interchange south of the existing Cantrell Road interchange.
The Clinton Presidential Center executive director, Stephanie Streett, formally endorsed that alternative Friday.
"As one of the major tourist and educational attractions in downtown Little Rock, the Clinton Center is dependent upon visitor accessibility to our city's downtown," she wrote. "After evaluating the many options presented, I believe the 'split diamond' version will improve overall mobility, including pedestrian and vehicular traffic, to the downtown corridor and the Clinton Center. It will also increase public park space by removing the 2nd Street ramp."
Opponents, though, have been vocal as well.
Little Rock City Director Kathy Webb, in her own letter, said the city's proposed revisions don't go far enough and said it was premature for the city to even offer its comments.
"Currently, the AHTD says one of five purposes of the project is to improve mobility on I-30 and I-40," she wrote. "That means, mobility anywhere else is the city's problem, leaving the city to deal with the impact."
Tom Fennell, a Little Rock architect and longtime downtown resident who has led efforts to develop an alternative that would transform I-30 in downtown Little Rock into a boulevard, also submitted comments opposing the department's alternatives.
He took issue with the department's conclusion that not improving the corridor would hurt downtown Little Rock economically.
"It has long been documented that real estate adjacent to urban freeways has its value drastically reduced long term," he wrote. "One only has to drive along I-30 and I-630 in the downtown area to see the results first hand. For 60 years, abandoned houses, condemned buildings, empty lots and industrial sites have lined Little Rock's freeways."
Metro on 06/14/2016