FAYETTEVILLE -- Work to realign an intersection at Mission Boulevard and Old Wire Road likely will begin by the end of the year.
After years of discussion, city officials plan to add a traffic signal at the bend on Mission Boulevard west of Root Elementary School.
By the Numbers
Intersection Traffic
According to 2012 traffic counts in Fayetteville:
• 7,500 vehicles travel Old Wire Road just north of the intersection with Mission Boulevard each day
• 16,000 drivers use Mission Boulevard just southwest of the intersection on a daily basis
Source: Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department
The intersection can be difficult to navigate.
Drivers headed south on Old Wire often don't yield when turning right onto Mission. Drivers turning left have limited visibility and have a tendency to pull out while eastbound traffic on Mission is slowing to make a left turn onto Old Wire.
"I've seen four or five accidents in the last six months," Alderman Justin Tennant, who represents northeast Fayetteville, said during a City Council tour Thursday.
City engineers estimated construction at $500,000 in 2011.
The price tag more than doubled, however, when the Arkansas Highway Department designed the project. Mission Boulevard also Arkansas 45.
Design includes an additional lane on Mission with a 10-foot-tall retaining wall on the north side of the street where a new sidewalk is going in.
The plans would have required tearing down a house at 1400 Mission Blvd. owned by Kunal Mody and Crystal Patel, according to Washington County property records.
Members of the Transportation Committee agreed Thursday to instead ask the Highway Department to revise its plans. City officials still want a sidewalk on the north side of Mission, but they said they just need two lanes with a left-turn lane on Mission rather than the full four lanes.
City Engineer Chris Brown said the changes should cut construction costs in half. Less property would have to be acquired, and a retaining wall wouldn't have to be built, he said.
The city is paying for the project with about $1.2 million in federal and state money. Those contributions require a roughly $250,000 match out of the transportation bond program voters approved in 2006.
Brown said bond money also will be used to improve a 1.2-mile stretch of Old Wire from Mission Boulevard to Gulley Park. New curb, gutter, sidewalks and bike lanes eventually will be added, Brown said. A timeline hasn't been set for that project.
Former Alderman Bobby Ferrell, who attended Thursday's meeting, for years advocated replacing ditches along Old Wire with sidewalks.
Tennant, who came into office in 2011, said, "One of the things I've heard ever since I became Ward 3 alderman was, 'Could we do something to improve walkability between this area and Gulley Park?'"
The overall project will create better access for multiple neighborhoods along Old Wire Road and for schoolchildren walking to Root Elementary School, Tennant said.
NW News on 03/07/2014