Two dozen community leaders from Pulaski, Faulkner and Lonoke counties on Friday agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding promoting development of an east-west corridor along Arkansas 89 between Cabot and Mayflower and across north Pulaski County.
They also agreed to formally request a study of the corridor from the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department. Jim McKenzie, the top official at Metroplan, the long-range transportation planning agency for central Arkansas, said his agency was available to partner with the department on the study.
The Highway 89 Corridor Coalition, as the group has named itself, convened in Jacksonville to begin development of an alternative to the formerly proposed North Belt Freeway.
The freeway no longer is in the region's long-range transportation plan, primarily because of cost -- more than $600 million -- and development encroaching on its planned route. But members of the coalition said its demise hasn't eliminated interest in, or the need for, an east-west corridor connecting U.S. 67/167 on the east and Interstate 40 on the west.
"There is a lot of folks in north Lonoke County, south White County, east Pulaski County and even to our east in Prairie County that come through Cabot and ingress toward North Little Rock and ultimately west Little Rock," Cabot Mayor Bill Cypert said. "It seems plausible to me to at least do some due diligence on what we're talking about in looking at an alternative way since North Belt is essentially dead."
Cypert, a former Highway and Transportation Department planner, said residents in his city and beyond need a route other than U.S. 67/167 and I-40 in North Little Rock to Interstate 30 or Interstate 430.
"Getting traffic and managing traffic on that short strip of I-40 in North Little Rock is going to be a continual nightmare," he said. "This alternative would certainly relieve long-term a lot of that traffic and divert it across this corridor."
Cypert, Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher, Mayflower Mayor Randy Holland and U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., helped organize the coalition, which includes state lawmakers from the area, county judges and representatives from Little Rock Air Force Base at Jacksonville.
Holland said an "east-west corridor" has been lacking in the area for a "long time. It would help all of central Arkansas."
The North Belt, a 13-mile route connecting U.S. 67/167 and I-40 west through parts of Sherwood, Camp Robinson and North Little Rock, long has been deemed a regionally significant project.
"We outgrew our goal of a North Belt," Hill said. "The city grew beyond us and our plans got beyond us. While it was a worthy idea when Lyndon Johnson was president, it did not sustain itself as a long-run objective."
Still, planners say that without an east-west corridor, traffic volume, congestion and safety concerns would increase on U.S. 67/167, I-40, Arkansas 107 and other roads in the area; continue to restrict access from homes in the northeastern part of the county to the jobs and services available in Maumelle and west Little Rock; and leave the region without the circumferential freeway system common in other urban areas.
Even if the new corridor is developed, members of the coalition say it will use elements of Arkansas 89 already present and improve the roads that now leave motorists maneuvering through what Hill called a "hodgepodge" of state highways and county roads.
"It is never going to be an interstate," he said after the meeting. "No one is interested in that."
Instead, it would be developed as a major arterial route and already is identified as such in the region's long-range transportation plan.
"The purpose of this group is to come together and think about designs that will lead to a safe corridor," Hill said.
Among the details to be worked out is access at U.S. 67/167. Two options have been identified, including Arkansas 89 at Cabot. Motorists traveling west from there must travel onto Tates Mill Road, Batesville Pike and Sayles Road before Arkansas 89 reappears.
But Fletcher and others want an alternative that includes a new interchange at Coffelt Crossing, an unimproved access to U.S. 67/167 between Jacksonville and Cabot. But its route would take motorists west to Republican Road and into an area that is at the approach end to the runway at Little Rock Air Force Base.
Base officials have discouraged development there because of the elevated potential for accidents involving aircraft landing or taking off from the base.
Fletcher and others would like the new interchange to be considered as part of improvements the Highway and Transportation Department already is planning for that section of U.S. 67/167. But McKenzie said federal regulations governing interchanges likely would add years to improving that section.
Metro on 01/30/2016