A section of Cantrell Road in Little Rock has been identified as among the most congested highways in Arkansas.
The section between Perryville Road and Kavanaugh Boulevard in the Midtown area of the state's capital was among a dozen "hot spots" the Arkansas Highway Commission earlier this month approved for studies to "determine the need for and feasibility of capacity improvements to improve the level of service for road users."
The segment of Cantrell, also known as Arkansas 10, was one of two state highway sections in Pulaski County that warranted study under recommendations from the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department staff. The other was part of Colonel Glenn Road between Bowman Road and Arkansas 5.
The dozen "hot spots" also included five state highway segments in Benton and Washington counties, two in Garland County and one in Saline County.
"They are high up on our radar so we're going to figure out what is it that we need to do," said Lorie Tudor, the department's deputy director and chief operating officer. "Once we get these studies done and we identify what our needs are going to be, or what the appropriate improvement needs to be, we can start adding these jobs" to the overall state transportation improvement program, which is a rolling four-year plan for road construction the department uses to develop its construction program.
The department long has kept a running list of its needed improvements, last updated in 2007. State highway needs -- including system preservation, capacity needs and other improvements -- has been estimated to be more than $19 billion over 10 years. That figure far outstrips its estimated revenue over that period, which is about $8 billion.
With money at a premium, the commission and department have focused on system preservation, committing 80 percent of its state and federal revenue, primarily from fuel taxes, to it with the remainder going to capital projects, Tudor said.
System preservation, however, can mean capacity improvements, she said.
"The system preservation funds [are] not only to rehabilitate pavement that's falling apart but also pockets, or areas of the state, that are extremely congested," Tudor said. "If there is no system reliability, we considered that system preservation."
The next step was to figure out how to prioritize the billions of dollars in system preservation needs. For that, the department turned to new software from Decision Lens of Arlington, Va., which says its software sifts through data to help prioritize an agency's or company's "highest value projects."
The department fed its system preservation needs through the software using the number of lanes and number of vehicles.
"We assigned weights to different criteria and all of those needs bubbled up to the top and those were the ones we said we need to do first," Tudor said. "Most of the ones that are being studied are already widened. They are just overwhelmed with the amount of traffic."
The "hot spots" are all part of the Arkansas Primary Highway Network, which total about half of the more than 16,000 miles on the state highway system but carry more than 90 percent of the traffic.
In addition to the two Pulaski County stretches, the other "hot spots" are:
• Arkansas 102 from Arkansas 102B to Arkansas 94, Arkansas 59 between the north and south connections of Arkansas 72, and Arkansas 94 from U.S. 71B to Old Wire Road in Benton County.
• Arkansas 7 from Arkansas 88 to U.S. 270 and U.S. 270 at the U.S. 70B, Arkansas 88 and Arkansas 7 interchanges in Garland County.
• U.S. 412 from Arkansas 112 to east of Interstate 49 in Washington County and U.S. 71B from U.S. 412 to Arkansas 264 in Washington and Benton counties.
• Arkansas 35 from Interstate 30 to Military Road in Saline County.
• Interstate 540 from Arkansas 22 to Interstate 40 in Crawford and Sebastian counties and Arkansas 22 from 46th Street to 74th Street in Sebastian County.
The studies "are going to allow us to to go in and take care of those areas that are so congested that they cause tremendous delays to the road users," Tudor said.
Many of the sections already have been widened. The section of Cantrell is four lanes, with a center turn lane for much of the section, between Perryville and Kavanaugh and carries 28,000 vehicles daily, according to the latest department figures.
"It's not just going to be an easy fix like, 'Oh, we can just go in and widen this to five lanes,'" Tudor said. "It's already five lanes and still it's so congested. We're going to have to be creative on the engineering solution on how to alleviate that congestion."
Some, like the Cantrell segment, have other challenges, such as coursing through a highly developed urban setting lined with businesses and residences.
"You can't just go through a section like that and widen it, at least not without a lot of study of what the impacts will be," Tudor said.
But she said the effects must be balanced with the agency's mission to promote "mobility and safety."
"We try to minimize impacts and keep mobility and safety," Tudor said. "We want to minimize impacts to the community but in some places, you just can't do all three. That being the case right there, we need to be very creative."
The studies are expected to take one or two years. Some will be done by the department and others will be performed by outside consultants.
"We'll do our best to make them happen quickly," Tudor said.
Metro on 03/14/2016