The Little Rock Board of Directors on Tuesday authorized construction of a bicycle-pedestrian bridge north of LaHarpe Boulevard, which will grant Arkansas River Trail users a break from car traffic.
City directors voted unanimously to authorize a $1.1 million contract with Manhattan Road & Bridge to build the overpass across railroad tracks, one of three piecemeal projects at varying stages of development to buffer a fraught segment of the trail from vehicles.
Construction of the 16-foot-wide bridge will take about 6 months, said Mike Hood, who manages the civil engineering division of the city's Public Works Department. Little Rock will use a $1 million state grant and sales tax revenue to pay for the bridge, which could cost up to $1.3 million with contingencies.
Once it's installed, cyclists and pedestrians using the trail will remain on the north side of LaHarpe Boulevard from the Clinton Presidential Park Bridge.
Although users will at least temporarily have to travel lighter-trafficked streets and sidewalks near LaHarpe and Cantrell Road, they will no longer have to cross streets that carry heavy traffic, said John Landosky, the city's bicycle-pedestrian coordinator.
Initially, the bridge will connect to sidewalks north of LaHarpe, both east and west of the railroad tracks.
Ultimately, city officials want to build a ramp to connect the eastern side of the overpass with the trail's Medical Mile segment. Little Rock applied for a $2 million Federal Lands Access Program grant to pay for the link and for shoring up the slipping bank on which that part of the trail is built, Landosky said.
The trail west of the bridge will flow into a slim sidewalk along Cantrell, but the city's goal there is to tie it in with a pathway it is negotiating to build across corporate office property owned by Dillard's Inc.
Little Rock and Dillard's are nearing a deal after negotiating for years about moving the trail onto the company's property, Mayor Mark Stodola said last week.
Dillard's spokesman Julie Bull said Friday that the company is "working diligently" with Stodola's office and that company officials "look forward to a completed trail soon."
Mason Ellis, secretary for Bicycle Advocacy of Central Arkansas, said many cyclists haven't used the Little Rock side of the 15-mile Little Rock-North Little Rock loop because of the proximity to traffic on LaHarpe and Cantrell.
Should a deal be reached, the city would have to engineer the path and find money to pay for its construction, Stodola said.
Metro on 06/07/2017