The Arkansas State Highway Commission approved more than $160 million in bids Wednesday from contractors across the country to move forward with 59 state road projects, including jobs near Texarkana, Fayetteville and Forrest City, department officials said.

Arkansas state Highway and Transportation spokesman Randy Ort said that the $161.4 million in bids selected and heard during two meetings should be finalized Friday.

The largest bid was $51,946,709.12 from Memphis-based APAC-Tennessee Inc. for a lane reconstruction project on Interstate 40 near Forrest City. The project will affect about 8 miles of the roadway in St. Francis County, and the bid estimates the job will be completed within 140 days.

Ort said that the reconstruction project is similar to the 11-mile job recently completedon I-40 between Hazen and Brinkley. However, because of easier access to the highway near Forrest City, it is less likely to impede motorists.

The second-largest bid was $16,110,526.70 from Colorado-based Interstate Highway Construction Inc. to complete a 4.3-mile span of Arkansas 71 from Doddridge to the Louisiana border. When complete, the roadway will become part of a system to be called Arkansas 549, which will run north through Texarkana.

“The project is part of the future Interstate 49 corridor which help[s] link the Gulf of Mexico with Canada through western Arkansas,” department officials said in a news release.

At the other end of the developing Arkansas 549 highway system, the $148 million Texarkana Northern Loop project is approaching completion, Ort said, adding that it should be opened and redesignated as Arkansas 549 sometime inearly May.

Rogers-based DECCO Contractors-Paving Inc. bid $9,498,703.04 for a project on Arkansas 265 that includes replacing a defunct culvert with a bridge structure and widening nearly 2 miles of the highway. Ort said that the work near Fayetteville is the next step in a series of road-widening projects on Arkansas 265 and will affect the area from East Joyce Boulevard to the Fayetteville city limits.

Ort said that the department plans to extend the road-widening efforts north to Rogers, which “will eventually be the Eastern North-South Corridor.”

Of the 59 bids let during the commission meetings Wednesday, the following are for projects located in central Arkansas:

$5,299,606.63 to install wirerope safety fencing on sections of nearly 40 miles of Arkansas 67 between Cabot and BaldKnob

$1,507,816.26 to overlay 7.1 miles of Arkansas 9 near Morrilton in Perry County

$1,201,543.34 to overlay 8.31 miles of Arkansas 16 near Searcy in White County

$987,996 to reconstruct 1.1 miles of County Road 14 in Perry County

$936,097 to overlay 6 miles of Arkansas 67 near Malvern in Hot Spring County

$720,854.91 to overlay 3.7 miles of Arkansas 67 near Jacksonville in Pulaski County

$583,269.70 to overlay about 5.04 miles of county roads 3 and 11 in Hot Spring County

$339,754.42 to overlay less than a mile (.88) of Arkansas 64, 65 and 65B at an intersection at Conway in Faulkner County

$245,854.05 to overlay about 2.41 miles of County Road 6 in Pope County

$413,372.22 to overlay about 3.75 miles of county roads 53 and 54 in Jefferson County

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 04/19/2013