Correction: Arkansas 171 in Hot Spring County ranks sixth on the state Highway and Transportation Department's list of highway system roads that are in the poorest condition. Arkansas 171's ranking was incorrect this story; the ranking was correct in a chart with the story.
When a roadway has a designation as a U.S. highway or a state highway, there is a common assumption by many that it is an adequately maintained roadway, or perhaps in better shape than the average county road.
That assumption can be wrong.
With more than 16,000 miles of state highways, U.S. highways and interstates to maintain, the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department cannot maintain all of them at the same level, highway officials say. So the agency must pick and choose.
For the past several years, the department has devoted much of its effort to the 8,000 miles of its system that carries 90 percent of the traffic. That means the other half of the system, which carries 10 percent of the traffic, has gotten less or, in some cases, no attention over the years.
The department has identified 500 miles of such roads in the system, spread out over 108 different sections, that have pavement in poorer condition than the rest of the system. The sections were culled from a database the department maintains. Information for the database comes from measurements taken by the agency's automatic road analyzer van, which is arrayed with sensors and cameras to document the pavement condition of the system.
"Some of these routes probably would be better served if we turned them back to gravel," Bennett said. "They might be a lot better road for the few people that drive on them.
"That's not necessarily a good option, either. But some of these are in [such poor] condition that you can't spend $200,000 to overlay them. They need to be completely torn out and rebuilt, which costs about a million and a half dollars a mile."
Take Arkansas 308S, a spur connecting U.S. 63B and Arkansas 308B in the north part of Marked Tree in Poinsett County in northeast Arkansas, for example. It carries but 80 vehicles a day. Under metrics the department developed, a section of Arkansas 308S, just over a tenth of a mile long, is in the worst shape of any section of highway in Arkansas.
"This one goes up to an airport in Poinsett County," Scott Bennett, the top official at the department, said in remarks earlier this month to the Arkansas Good Roads/Transportation Council. "It only has 80 vehicles a day, but it's a road that some people use."
Bennett and other highway officials are using the worst 500 miles to illustrate the maintenance deficit the department is running and help stir discussions with the five-member Arkansas Highway Commission as it begins to develop a new statewide transportation improvement plan.
"We don't talk about [maintenance] a whole lot," Bennett said. "We talk about construction a whole lot. But on the maintenance side, with the funding we've had, we've only been able to meet about half of our maintenance needs.
"Now, with our budget starting next year, we are going to invest more money in maintenance. Things will be better."
Beginning July 1, the department will shift $18 million within its budget to hire 200 additional full-time maintenance employees, purchase new equipment and provide more money for the states's 10 highway maintenance districts to purchase material.
The boost in the maintenance was partly a reaction to the criticism the department received for its response to the harsh weather the state endured last winter. But the personnel and material can also be devoted to routine maintenance, especially in mild winter years.
But the boost in maintenance means the construction budget takes a hit.
The new budget the Highway Commission approved earlier this month leaves $88,662,700 in state money available for road construction for the fiscal year beginning July 1, significantly less than the $109,206,800 available in the budget year ending June 30.
"The bottom line is without additional revenue, if you put more money in maintenance, it's got to come from somewhere and it ends up coming from construction," Bennett said.
Bennett is leaving open the possibility that even more money may be devoted to maintenance in the coming years because the roads receiving little or no maintenance now could end up needing even pricier fixes.
The maintenance woes are the "Ugly" in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Bennett has highlighted in recent presentations, even going so far as to use the theme music from the 1966 spaghetti Western that starred Clint Eastwood.
"There's a lot of good we've got going on, there's some bad things and an ugly thing or two" is the way Bennett puts it.
The "good" is the collective $3 billion in road work that voters approved in 2011 and 2012, $1.2 billion to improve 450 miles of interstate and $1.8 billion to devote to widening and congestion relief aimed at projects of regional significance on 200 miles of highways. The latter is financed by a 0.5 percent increase in a statewide sales tax that will be in place for 10 years. It also provides $700 million for city and county road and bridge projects.
The "bad" includes uncertainty over the federal Highway Trust Fund. It is principally financed by federal fuel taxes and can be used to pay for 80 percent of qualified federal-aid highway projects. But more money has been obligated from the fund than it has taken in in recent years, forcing Congress to periodically shift general revenue to cover the difference. The fund is scheduled to run out of money later this summer, and Congress has yet to agree on a solution.
Soon "we could have no federal money for construction projects," Bennett said.
At risk are $250 million in federal aid projects in Arkansas between now and December "we may have to pull," and 56 projects worth $500 million won't be awarded contracts next year "if the issue is not fixed," Bennett said.
Rising construction costs also are part of the "bad." Bennett cites these statistics: In 1977, $100 million could widen 143 miles of highways; today, the same amount will widen 15 miles. An overlay program costing $10 million would maintain 400 miles then; today, 54 miles. The agency could build 136 200-foot-long bridges for $25 million in 1977; now, that figure will build 26.
Even with the challenges the department faces, Bennett said the agency no longer can ignore growing maintenance issues. He notes that the $3 billion in voter-approved construction initiatives focus resources on less than 4 percent of the state highway system.
"We've got to make sure we're maintaining the other 96 percent of our highway system," he said.
Much of the worst roads the department has identified are in southeast Arkansas, a part of the state commission member Robert Moore calls home.
"They are still part of the system," Moore said in an interview. "People who travel those roads have an expectation to travel on a safe and smooth road because they pay taxes like the rest of us."
The maintenance issue is a byproduct of the department and commission's recent emphasis on devoting money to where the traffic is. Commission members are discussing the possibility of setting aside more state money for maintenance rather than construction. "I think there's some interest ... but I don't know if we've come to any conclusions," Moore said.
Among the least maintained highways is a section of Arkansas 171 in Hot Spring County, which ranks seventh in the department's pavement condition index. The index is a composite score based on rutting, or the depression in the pavement created by vehicle tire tracks; how many cracks the pavement has; and its international roughness index, which is a standardized measurement used to evaluate the condition of a roadway.
The section is a little more than a mile long and connects U.S. 67 with Wine Dot Road north of Malvern and the Flakeboard manufacturing facility, a longtime producer of medium density fiber board. The trucks that carry its product use Arkansas 171, according to Hot Spring County Judge Bill Scrimshire.
The highway is known locally as the New Willamette Road, named after the original owner of the manufacturing plant. It carries about 530 vehicles per day. Scrimshire drove on it last week after he was told it was among the worst state highways in Arkansas.
"I think I've seen worse highways," he said. "But I can see where it's going to have to have some work real soon."
But what that work, if any ever comes, will entail is uncertain.
"Even though they only carry a few vehicles a day, they are still state highways," Bennett said. "We're still responsible for maintaining them, but it's hard to talk about spending a million and a half dollars a mile to improve a road that has 80 vehicles a day on it, especially with 16,400 miles of highway, the 12th largest highway system in the country.
"But we've got to figure out a way we can do better for all highways, not just the 4 percent we're improving with these two major highway programs, but for all the highways that people drive on."
Metro on 06/23/2014