BISCOE — After a year of construction on Interstate 40 near the White River, the shift of heavy traffic onto U.S. 70 is most evident along an 8-mile stretch between Biscoe and Brinkley.
Bone-jarring dips and cracks dot the section of highway in the Cache River bottom lands that makes up about a third of a 25-mile alternate route around the I-40 work.
In some areas along the 80-year-old piece of two-lane highway that residents call “The Dump,” the middle of the roadway has caved in, allowing for differences of several inches between the eastbound and westbound lanes.
“That road is completely gone,” said Kent Smith, mayor of the small town of Biscoe, which straddles U.S. 70 and its intersection with Arkansas 33 in Prairie County.
“There’s a big low place in the middle of it. The sides of it are falling off. Every bridge you cross is extremely rough. I don’t know how many trailers people have lost that have come unhooked because of the roughness on the bridges,” he said of the stretch of highway east of town that falls into neighboring Monroe County.
The damaged road in the heart of duck-hunting country is only part of the frustration since U.S. 70 between Hazen and Brinkley became the preferred alternative to gridlock on I-40, residents and business owners say.
At The Hurley House Cafe, waitress Christy Dorathy said the added traffic has made for headaches that haven’t come with the bonus of more business at the cafe.
“Everybody’s so delayed that they don’t stop,” she said between checking on a table and keeping an eye on the cafe’s regular “coffee drinkers.”
The cafe sits at U.S. 70 and U.S. 63, which has become a popular detour for eastbound traffic because it connects with I-40 right before the construction zone.
On a recent weekday, a constant line of tractor-trailers waited at the intersection to turn onto the alternate route, which Dorathy said was never the norm before the interstate construction.
In 2011, U.S. 70 was handling an average of only a few thousand cars a day along the route, according to Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department count estimates. By comparison, the stretch of I-40 that runs parallel to the highway averaged more than 30,000 vehicles a day last year.
Scott Munsell, a Highway Department spokesman, said 2012 traffic counts for U.S. 70 aren’t yet ready to be publicly released, but it’s clear that the route has seen a large increase in traffic since work began on I-40 in the fall of 2011, particularly since the interstate has been limited to one lane in both directions.
“Anytime there’s a problem - whether it’s a stalled vehicle or flat tire, all the way up to a major accident where they’ve got to bring in emergency vehicles [in the I-40 construction zone] - it shuts things down and the backups are considerable ... 70 certainly is where all that traffic ends up going,” he said.
And that’s not likely to change for at least a few more years. The $55 million to $60 million project on I-40 isn’t expected to be completed until the summer, and once that project is completed, the Highway Department plans to start work on a section of the interstate east of the Cache River, Munsell said. The expected completion for that project, which will also use U.S. 70 as an alternate route, is late 2014.
Beyond that, still more work is scheduled on the stretch of I-40 through the summer of 2018, he said.
While the construction is ongoing, the Highway Department’s basic goal for U.S. 70 is just to keep it passable by doing spot maintenance.
That’s especially the plan for “The Dump,” which was built in the 1920s and was already having problems before the increased traffic, Munsell said.
“It’s not a prime base surface for a highway, certainly not a modern highway. ... It’s had problems in the past. It’s probably going to continue to have problems, and we’re going to continue to address those problems as they pop up,” Munsell said.
Highway Department crews have worked to level out dips that have developed where the roadway meets bridges, and engineers will continue to monitor those areas, he said. But through atleast the next few years, the Highway Department doesn’t expect to replace the section of roadway, he said.
“There’s just not time to go in there and do major rehab work on Highway 70 before it’s going to have to be used as an alternate route for the I-40work,” he said.
That means travelers who go through Biscoe will continue to have to traverse the road to the east, which has no shoulder in some areas and sharp drop-offs.
Resident Steve Martin said the road condition has been troublesome, but he’s more concerned with the traffic’s effect on his store, Martin’s Grocery and Deli, in Biscoe.
“The days when the traffic is backed up, we might as well shut the doors,” he said, estimating that business is down 40 percent since the I-40 construction began.
“Not only do they not stop in, but we don’t get our local people either because they don’t want to chance an accident,” he said.
Comprehensive data that would tabulate the number of crashes in that area aren’t yet available, but Arkansas State Police spokesman Bill Sadler said troopers haven’t reported any more accidents than usual along U.S. 70.
Troopers have reported more crashes on I-40 in theconstruction zone, which Sadler said is expected anytime there are interstate lane closures or traffic shifts.
In Biscoe, crashes on I-40 have created enough congestion to make the town nearly impassable two or three times a week, said Smith, the mayor. The town gets perhaps the worst of the added traffic from interstate crashes because the town’s overpass access is right in the middle of the I-40 construction zone.
“There are some days it’s just terrible. You can’t go anywhere. You can’t do anything,” Smith said. “We’re trying to make the best of it. ... I realize they have to do the work on the interstate, but it’s definitely a big inconvenience.”
When residents do venture out, Smith said, they take just about any other route they can to stay off the highway and avoid the tractor-trailers and out-of-state travelers’ vehicles.
Mitzi Osborne, a retired teacher who lives on U.S. 70 next to the Biscoe post office, said she takes back-streets when she can, but not a week goes by that she doesn’t get stuck waiting in her driveway or trying to turn onto side streets, she said. Lines of tractor-trailers and interstate travelers have also blocked her in on her church parking lot.
“They speed by too fast. It’s a headache,” she said, shifting her mail to one hand and gesturing out the post office’s window at the roadway.
With the prospect of more years of the added traffic, Osborne has begun calling U.S. 70 by another name.
“I-70,” she said. “That’s what we call it.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/26/2012