A longtime initiative to reduce vehicle-train collisions in central Arkansas suffered a setback when the Federal Highway Administration recently withdrew $8.7 million in U.S. transportation money committed for a project to build a railroad overpass on East McCain Boulevard in North Little Rock.
Development of the overpass project is going forward, and city and regional planning officials believe the money will be available some time this summer, but they concede the federal cash is no longer assured.
While the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department "expects that the project can and will be reobligated in Summer 2015, those assurances have all been verbal and there is a new element of risk to the project as a result," officials with Metroplan, the central Arkansas regional transportation planning agency, said in a memorandum to the Metroplan board of directors.
Sandra Otto, the Arkansas division administrator for the Federal Highway Administration, briefed members of the board last week on the tighter management controls the agency is applying to all funding for road and bridge construction projects that use federal dollars.
When money is obligated to a project, "those funds can't be used anywhere else," she said.
The problem happens when projects don't advance through the various stages to construction quickly enough, she said. The money is sitting unused at a time when the federal Highway Trust Fund is running short of money and projected needs outpace what money is available, Otto said.
"We've had to show more transparency, and we've had to be a little bit more diligent about managing the funds that we have so that we can show that if you give us more funds, we can use it in the appropriate way," she said.
New guidance from Otto's agency limits federal transportation money availability for a particular project to within 90 days of a particular project phase's beginning.
"As a general rule, a project should be advertised (or a request for proposals or qualifications issued) within 90 days of authorization," the guidance states. "If the project is not progressing promptly (e.g., not being advertised and awarded), the state [Department of Transportation] should withdraw the project or applicable phase."
Mike Smith, the longtime North Little Rock city engineer, said he believes the schedule for planning, designing, acquiring right of way and relocating utilities for the East McCain Boulevard project was "a little more aggressive than was reasonable."
The project likely is the most complicated the city has undertaken in Smith's 26 years with the city, he said.
"This is the first I've followed from beginning to end," he said, noting the process has been "lengthy and tedious."
Smith plans to retire in June. "I won't get to see it built. I sure wish they could go faster."
Its federal funding was in danger two years ago when Metroplan sought at least two proposed fixes to keep the project on track and preserve the funding.
The overpass project is designed to eliminate a street-level railroad crossing and collisions involving trains and vehicles, and was one of a dozen railroad overpass projects Metroplan championed beginning in the mid-1990s to make central Arkansas roads safer.
In that time, seven have been built. They include overpasses on Main Street in Jacksonville, Arkansas 38 in Cabot, Salem Road in Conway, Maumelle Boulevard in Maumelle, Baseline Road and South Loop in Little Rock, and Arkansas 35 in Benton. The projects have been built with a mixture of federal, state and local money.
In addition to East McCain, three other projects remain to be built by 2020, the deadline set for the initiative. They are J.P. Wright Loop in Jacksonville, Arkansas 89 in Mayflower and Geyer Springs Road in Little Rock, which is scheduled to be built next year, according to Metroplan officials. The 12th, on Springer Boulevard in Little Rock, was dropped from the original list.
Meanwhile, North Little Rock is also holding onto money it had budgeted for the East McCain overpass project. It totals about $1.8 million. The city already has spent $1.2 million for initial engineering, additional engineering, right of way and relocating utilities, according to Karen Scott, the city's finance director.
"Based on the proposed timeline and current engineers' estimates, we felt that the $1.825 million carryover would be sufficient to take us through FY15, knowing that we may have to appropriate additional funds in FY16, based on the actual contract amounts, once the bid is let," she said in an email.
Metroplan officials say no other projects are at risk of losing federal funding but warned the agency board that "projects for which construction bids have not been taken should be monitored closely."
A project on Alcoa Road in Benton "must stay on schedule for bid letting this federal fiscal year or it too could face a similar fate," according to the staff memorandum.
Information for this article was contributed by Jake Sandlin of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Metro on 05/04/2015