1st meeting on I-30 corridor draws 150

‘They won’t tell you anything,’ one business owner says of road officials

Ron Montgomery and his wife, Angela, examine one of several maps outlining areas under study by the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department to relieve traffic congestion on Interstate 30 during a public forum Tuesday in North Little Rock. The Montgomerys own several businesses in the area under study for possible highway expansion, which the Highway Department hopes to start in 2017.

Ron Montgomery and his wife, Angela, examine one of several maps outlining areas under study by the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department to relieve traffic congestion on Interstate 30 during a public forum Tuesday in North Little Rock. The Montgomerys own several businesses in the area under study for possible highway expansion, which the Highway Department hopes to start in 2017.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Nearly 150 people showed up Tuesday night at the first of two public meetings the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department is holding this week to help plan improvements to the Interstate 30 corridor through Little Rock and North Little Rock.

"It's a very impressive turnout," said Terry Hartwick, president and chief executive officer of the North Little Rock Chamber of Commerce, which hosted the meeting in the second-floor conference room of its offices at 100 Main St. in North Little Rock. "There's a lot of interest and a lot of concern when you're talking about a half-billion dollar project."

The cost of improving the 6.7-mile corridor, which stretches from Interstate 530 to U.S. 67/167, and a section of Interstate 40 is estimated to be in the range of $450 million, a price tag that would include replacing the I-30 bridge over the Arkansas River.

The project is part of the Highway Department's $1.8 billion highway construction program targeting projects of regional significance in a bid to widen and improve 200 miles of roadways spread over 35 projects. It is financed, principally, by a half-percent increase in the statewide sales tax that voters approved in 2012 that will be in place for 10 years.

The second meeting will be from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday in the Cash/Campbell ballroom at the Comfort Inn & Suites Presidential, 707 I-30 in Little Rock.

Like Tuesday's meeting, it will be held in an open-house format to allow the public to view maps and exhibits, to ask questions and to provide input on the study.

State highway officials and their consultants stressed the two meetings were designed to collect information from people in the study corridor and give them an opportunity to identify the problems they see within the corridor and to offer their ideas to improve the corridor.

What the engineers didn't offer at Tuesday's meeting is answers to the many questions people in the corridor have about the project.

"They won't tell you anything," said Angela Montgomery of Maumelle after she and her husband, Ron, viewed the maps and other documents on display.

Together, they have owned Ram Horn Furniture on Washington Avenue in North Little Rock in the shadow of the I-30 river bridge for 22 years.

"Are we going to have to move our business," Angela Montgomery asked. "Are they going to pay us? We're concerned. It's our living."

Larry Jacimore has a similar problem on the other side of the river, where his business, Data File Storage, is housed in a 19th-century building at 620 President Clinton Ave. Its wall abuts the state highway right-of-way for the bridge, he said.

Jacimore said he knew he wouldn't get definitive answers so he tried a different tack.

"I asked, 'Have they established the probability of whether [the new bridge] would go east or west of the [existing] bridge?'" he said. "They didn't know."

"I also asked them about a double-decker bridge. They would save right-of-way. Other states do it. Why not here?

No luck, he said.

But the concerns expressed by the public in the two meetings will be taken into account when engineers weigh what improvements will work in the corridor. More meetings will be scheduled when preliminary designs are prepared.

"We're finding out stuff we can only get by talking to people," said Jerry Holder, an executive from Garver LLC, the engineering firm the Highway and Transportation Department selected to manage the project. "It's valuable information. We'll take it back and take it into account."

State Rep. Frederick Love, D-Little Rock, said he attended the meeting to familiarize himself with the study corridor, having been picked by Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines to serve on an I-30 Corridor Study committee.

Improving the corridor has "it's benefits," he said. "We all know the congestion that takes place in the mornings and afternoons."

But he hopes engineers and planners will be "very cognizant of the impact it will have on the community. There needs to be more meetings where they engage the community."

Love suggested holding the meetings in churches, where people "feel more comfortable about sharing their views."

Maps showing potential constraints to the project identified about a dozen primarily black churches within the study corridor.

Metro on 08/13/2014