$39M cost put on one I-30 project in part of Arkansas

A nearly 20-mile section of Interstate 30 in southwest Arkansas* will cost more than $39 million to improve, according to bid documents the Arkansas Department of Transportation opened Wednesday.

The work on the 19.7-mile section in Clark, Nevada and Hempstead counties was among nearly two dozen projects worth $214 million on which the agency opened bids.

Other significant projects included one to widen a 14.5-mile section of U.S. 412 from U.S. 67 in Greene County to Arkansas 141 in Lawrence County for nearly $64 million, work to widen about 20 miles of U.S. 82 and U.S. 424 between Hamburg in Ashley County and the Louisiana border for more than $70 million, and the widening of a 2.2-mile section of Arkansas 5 in Saline County for $17.4 million.

All the bids will be reviewed for accuracy before the department makes them final.

The I-30 project wasn't the costliest, but it will have the biggest effect on motorists, given that the route carries about 30,000 vehicles daily.

Under the bidding procedures, contractors were required to bid how many days lanes would closed. In this case, the low bidder, Redstone Construction Group Inc., said it would require lane closings totaling 510 days, which means the project will take about 18 months, said Danny Straessle, a department spokesman.

"There could well be one lane closed for the duration of the project depending on how [the contractors] set up," he said.

The project is short of a total reconstruction. Instead, it calls for a layer of pavement to be milled out and replaced with fresh asphalt. The so-called mill-and-inlay method is employed to extend the pavement's useful life instead of waiting until a more expensive, total reconstruction is required.

Similar work encompassing roughly the same section was performed in 2001 under an earlier interstate improvement program, Straessle said.

The work is being done under a $1.3 million interstate improvement program under a $575 million bond reauthorization voters approved in 2011 and that has largely been completed.

Work has finished on 290 miles of interstate at a cost of $997 million, according to the latest agency data. Another 13 miles worth $225 million is under construction.

The I-30 project is among 40 miles of interstate work worth $55 million scheduled in 2018. Only work worth no more than $20 million is scheduled to be awarded next year.

Meanwhile, Atlas Asphalt Inc. and Delta Asphalt of Arkansas Inc. of Batesville submitted the low bid on the project to widen U.S. 412 east from Walnut Ridge. The highway is an important east-west route across north Arkansas. About 4,300 vehicles daily travel the section to be widened to four lanes from two.

Redstone also was the low bidder on the Arkansas 5 project, which will widen the highway between Alcoa Road in Benton and Arkansas 183 in Bryant. Up to 15,000 vehicles travel on that section each day, according to department data.

Metro on 09/13/2018

*CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story listed the wrong region in Arkansas where the work on I-30 is scheduled.

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