I-49 projects set for bid letting

FAYETTEVILLE — State highway officials are expected to take a big step toward alleviating traffic in the region when they seek bids in the next few months on two major, long-anticipated projects involving Interstate 49 interchanges.

One is a new Eighth Street interchange and related improvements in Bentonville, and the other is the interchange where Arkansas 112 and the Fulbright Expressway and I-49 come together in Fayetteville.

“They’re probably two of the biggest projects on I-49,” said Dick Trammel, Arkansas Highway Commission chairman. “They’re two of the key projects to make everything tie together. It’s going to improve the traffic situation for everybody.”

Mike Parks drives through both interchanges on his daily commute from Fayetteville to Bentonville and back. The work in Bentonville will be right outside his office door. Parks said he’s not looking forward to several more years of driving through construction zones, but he’ll cope.

“I guess I’ll have to, I’m pretty sure they’re not going to move my building,” Parks said. “The one thing I’ve noticed about the traffic is that if the drivers just gave a little courtesy, it’d be much better.”

Parks said he thinks the short-term inconvenience will be worth the long-term benefits.

The Fayetteville interchange work to widen and reconfigure exits 66 and 67 is set to be open for bids Wednesday. The project is estimated to cost from $50 million to $70 million. Construction is scheduled to begin in early 2017 and could take up to four years to complete.

Chad Adams, District 4 engineer with the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, said two ongoing widening projects to the north of the interchange should be done later this year. Completion will leave the interchange project as the only main lane section of I-49 under construction in Washington County. The combination of work and traffic during the construction phase will still likely cause headaches during rush hour, Adams said.

“Considering the magnitude of this project and the roughly 85,000 vehicles a day that normally travel through this interchange, it will undoubtedly result in traffic delays and backups,” Adams said. “For those motorists that travel through this interchange as a part of their daily commute to and from work, I recommend they look for ways to avoid the interchange during peak hours, whether that be by altering their travel times or by avoiding the interchange altogether.”

Adding a third lane in each direction will add capacity and should reduce rush hour backups on I-49 and improve traffic flow, according to Chris Brown, Fayetteville city engineer. The project also will shift the south lanes of I-49 to the east so that they’re parallel with the existing north lanes. There will still be a big curve around Fayetteville Auto Park.

The project aims to eliminate merging situations at either end of the interchange in addition to six lanes of interstate through it, according to highway officials.

Motorists traveling on the Fulbright Expressway who want to exit I-49 on Arkansas 112 now must quickly weave through south I-49 mainline traffic to get over into the right lane to exit. Traffic from Arkansas 112 heading to the Fulbright exit must first enter the main lanes of I-49 traffic before exiting. Those weaving movements will be eliminated as part of the project.

“The autopark project is going to be a really big project. It’s going to include a flyover,” Trammel said. “You’re going to see a lot easier access to Fayetteville and Springdale.”

Widening of the remaining two-lane portion of Garland Avenue between Poplar Street and I-49 is also on the list of projects to be bid Wednesday. The work is expected to cost up to $5 million.

The four-lane section of Garland is planned to extend north to the newly opened, four-lane Van Asche Drive. The move will provide more access to the retail area around the Northwest Arkansas Mall.

Garland has been widened to four lanes from Maple Street, on the University of Arkansas campus, to Agri Park. Van Asche connects with Arkansas 112 north of I-49 near Restaurant on the Corner.

In Bentonville, the project to widen and extend Eighth Street from I-49 to Moberly Lane is on the bid list for Sept. 21. The project includes a new interchange at I-49 between the existing Arkansas 102 and Arkansas 72 interchanges. It also includes improvements to the Arkansas 102 interchange.

The Eighth Street Improvement Project was announced in 2005. It runs along South Eighth Street from Interstate 49 west to Southwest I Street and includes widening Eighth Street to five lanes from the interstate to Moberly Lane, according to the city’s website. Plans also call for widening the road to four lanes with a raised median between Moberly Lane and Southwest I Street.

The project’s cost, including the city’s share and the Highway Department’s portion, is estimated at $70 million. The project could take four to five years to complete.

“Both of those interchanges, the upgrades are critical,” said Mike Churchwell, transportation director in Bentonville. “Just getting an Eighth Street interchange is going to be huge when you consider just Wal-Mart associates alone. Even if you don’t put everybody else in there, there’s thousands of them a day that are trying to access the area between Highway 72 and Highway 102.”

Work on Eighth Street is a partnership between the city and the state. The Highway Department will bid and build the new interchange, make improvements over to Moberly Lane and improve the Arkansas 102 interchange. The city will bid and do the work west from Moberly Lane.

A corridor study of the interstate several years ago identified the Arkansas 102 interchange as the worst in Northwest Arkansas, and the situation has only gotten worse over the intervening decade or so, Churchwell said. In the new plan, the interchanges are expected to work in concert to keep traffic moving.

“Everything’s just overwhelmed,” he said. “Obviously, all of this is going to have a significant impact on our east/west movements in and out of town.”

The underlying problem is a lack of capacity, Churchwell said.

“I tell people it’s a simple math problem: It’s volume versus capacity,” Churchwell said. “We literally have more volume than we have the capacity to handle. With the new interchange, we expect to get some relief.”

Churchwell said Eighth Street, in addition to having an I-49 interchange, will provide a critical four-lane arterial street to move traffic from the east side of town to the west. Central Avenue is heavily used but is limited because it goes through the downtown square.

“That’s not made for an arterial,” Churchwell said. “It’s not made to carry large volumes of traffic, even though it loads up pretty good. Nobody’s going to go in and tear down our square to run a road through there.”

Current east-west corridors that carry significant traffic are Walton Boulevard and Arkansas 102. Arkansas 102 eastbound will have a dedicated right turn lane at I-49, just east of Moberly Lane, Churchwell said.

“Evening rush hour has a tremendous amount of traffic wanting to go east and access I-49 southbound,” Churchwell said. “It doesn’t take but a couple of cars wanting to go straight at the stoplight and everybody’s backed up.”

Churchwell said the city plans to extend Eighth Street east to Water Tower Road and then improve Water Tower Road south to Arkansas 102.

He said Bentonville has partnered with the Highway Department more than any other Arkansas city during the past 10 years.

“We have prosperity problems. There’s a lot of places that would trade with us but, man, it can sure get to be a headache,” Churchwell said. “The solutions take so darn long from the time of conception till the time you actually get it done, you don’t talk in terms of months, you talk in terms of years. I’m 11 years on Eighth Street, and we haven’t turned any dirt yet.”