Cabot showed the state Highway Commission the money, and the Highway Commission delivered.
Well, sort of.
The commission voted last week to proceed with plans to build a third interchange for the fast-growing Lonoke County community, a move that came less than two months after Cabot voters approved refinancing a bond issue that will yield $9.5 million toward the cost of the interchange.
The project has been on the drawing board for at least 15 years. With the commission’s action last week, it likely will move up the commission’s priority list when it begins drafting its next state transportation-improvement plan, which will be for the years 2016-19.
“It’s become obvious if you will partner and provide funding, the department will help,” Cabot Mayor Bill Cypert said in an interview. “This turned out to be the case.”
Since 1996, the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department has either completed or scheduled work under such partnerships on nearly 50 projects worth more than $600 million, of which local entities have contributed nearly $200 million. But a new interchange remains a few years away.
“This pretty much initiates it,” department spokesman Randy Ort said of the commission vote. “But there’s a lot of work to be done.”
The commission vote authorized the department director, Scott Bennett, “to enter into the necessary agreements with the City of Cabot and to proceed with surveys, plans and construction for this improvement as funds become available.” The interchange’s estimated cost is about $21 million.
That preliminary work, which includes an environmental-impact statement, must be done before construction of the new interchange begins. It is work that can take a couple of years.
And it likely won’t move ahead of any of the 190 projects worth $2.5 billion that the department already has committed to in the state’s 2013-16 state transportation-improvement plan. The new interchange likely will be in the next plan, for 2016-19.
“The more development that can be done, the quicker it can be considered,” Ort said.
The long-running tale of the interchange is one that is replicated across the state as the commission and department juggles competing road construction priorities against the money they have available to spend.
A 2002 Highway Department study on the feasibility of a new Cabot interchange identified two primary needs in the transportation system that serves the city. The system was found to have a limited capacity for access to U.S. 67/167 by traffic in the vicinity of the city. The system was also found to have limited capacity for east/west traffic. The east/ west traffic has been primarily confined to Arkansas 89.
“A new Highway 67/167 interchange in north Cabot with a connection between Highways 67/167 and 367 would address these needs,” the study concluded.
The study had data to support its assertions, primarily relying on traffic counts on both U.S. 67/167 and Arkansas 89. Those numbers have steadily worsened in the intervening years.
At the time of the study, traffic on Arkansas 89 just to the east of its interchange with U.S. 67/167 was 18,800 vehicles a day. In 2012, the latest year for which numbers were available, the average daily traffic count had reached 21,000 per day.
And west of the interchange, traffic on Arkansas 89 already has exceeded what the study anticipated traffic would be on that stretch in 2022. Last year, the average daily traffic count on Arkansas 89 west was 8,700 vehicles, 1,100 vehicles more than the study had forecast for 2022.
Much of the traffic on U.S. 67/167 heading north to Cabot stops in Cabot. The town of 23,776 is a bedroom community, with many of its residents working at nearby Little Rock Air Force Base or in the city.
The average daily traffic count on U.S. 67/167 heading north to the Arkansas 89 exit reached about 36,000 last year. After the exit, the traffic dropped to 30,000.
Adding another interchange will help the traffic flow at U.S. 67/167 and Arkansas 89, which also is called Main Street, Cypert said.
“It will get east/west traffic off Main Street and relieve the congestion there,” he said.
Although it isn’t an aim of the Highway Department when building a new interchange, Cypert said the project will help the city in other areas as well.
“It will also be conducive to major economic development - both residential and commercial - in the northwest part of the city,” the mayor said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 06/10/2013