LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department has scheduled three hearings next month to solicit feedback on what improvements are needed on Interstate 40 from North Little Rock to Conway.
The hearings and the feedback on improvements that eventually will flow from the meetings cannot come soon enough for the thousands of commuters who travel the route daily. Only Monday, a tractor-trailer rig carrying thousands of gallons of diesel fuel crashed, forcing the westbound lanes to be closed for hours as a precaution.
Randy Holland, the mayor of Mayflower, which sits alongside the interstate, welcomes the department’s interest.
“The traffic flow is awful,” he said. “If anything happens, it just gets clogged.”
And whenever traffic is tied up on the interstate, as was the case Monday, traffic is directed onto Arkansas 365, which goes through Holland’s town of 2,250 and its two stoplights.
The two-lane highway was “totally packed” Monday because of the truck crash, Holland said.
The improvements are “very important for all of the towns” along the 25.5 miles between Interstate 430 in North Little Rock and Arkansas 25 in Conway, including Maumelle.
The numbers tell the story. In 2003, the average daily vehicle count on I-40 just east of Morgan was 42,000. Last year, the number of vehicles a day reached 67,000, an increase of nearly 60 percent. That 67,000 is 34 percent higher than the 50,000-vehicles-perday threshold that highway planners typically use to say widening of a four-lane interstate is warranted, said David Nilles, an Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department spokesman.
“People have thought about this for a long time,” said Randy Ort, another agency spokesman.
The hearings are part of a study designed to identify what improvements are needed to address congestion on the interstate. The schedule for the meetings is:
Aug. 3 at the Conway Parks and Recreation Department, 10 Lower Ridge Road, Conway.
Aug. 4 at the Mayflower High School cafeteria, 15 OldSandy Road, Mayflower.
Aug. 5 at Cedar Heights Baptist Church gymnasium, 14510 Cedar Heights Road, North Little Rock.
All three meetings will be from 4-7 p.m. The public is invited to visit anytime during those hours to ask questions and offer comments. More information is available from the department’s planning division at (501) 569-2201.
The study will look at the existing conditions of the corridor, its traffic volume, the type of traffic, the peak hours of traffic and “what improvements need to be made for the people who utilize that corridor,” Ort said.
Adding lanes is “an easy assumption,” he said. “But that may not be the only solution.”
The department also needs to look at other parts of the corridor, such as the interchanges.
“How are they handling traffic?” Ort said. “Can they be improved to handle traffic flow.”
The study also will look at the impact of two proposed interchanges: one at Maumelle to allow a third way into and out of the city, and one at Conway that may be part of that city’s future western loop.
“Are there other modes [of transportation] that need to be explored - additional public transportation, for example?” Ort said. “Can we better utilize ITS technology - intelligent transportation systems - to enhance traffic flow?”
The study will take about a year to complete. Additional meetings will take place once an environmental study, which will include proposed design changes, begins.
“People need to be aware we’re doing this,” Ort said. “This is their chance to come and offer their opinions.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 12 on 07/21/2010