NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — Spurred by the suggestions of state employees, city leaders, Arkansas commuters and The Guru’s readers, the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department conducts 600 to 700 driving-related investigations a year.
Arkansans want it all: New speed limits, stop signs, more traffic light “green time,” tweaked intersections and new highway lanes.
“Whatever the request is, we evaluate it,” said John Mathis, the Highway Department’s assistant state maintenance engineer.
The latest advice came from Bentonville resident Larry Dalton, whose idea about an area northeast of Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport made too much sense for The Guru not to pass it along.
Dalton thinks the spot where Regional Airport Boulevard (Arkansas 12) meets Arkansas 279 and Vaughn Road could be better. The Guru and Jon Schleuss, the newspaper’s video guy, traveled to the site this week, and Dalton met them there to describe it.
Readers can see the video at nwaonline.com/vaughn.
“The problem is on Arkansas 279,” Dalton writes in a note to The Guru. “Because Vaughn Road bisects 279 about 30 feet north of Regional Airport Boulevard, the ‘powers that be’ decided to place a sign informing drivers to ‘not block the intersection’ of 279 and Vaughn Road, which, of course, is pretty much ignored. This becomes annoying when drivers continuing west on Vaughn Road are blocked because someone stops, waiting for traffic on Regional Airport Boulevard and blocks Vaughn Road going west.
“Why can’t the Highway Department put the stop sign at Arkansas 279 and Vaughn Road, and a yield sign at 279 and Regional Airport Boulevard, keeping clueless 279 drivers from blocking Vaughn Road?”
Mathis said an investigator will look at the area.
When the traffic investigators visit, they’d best visit Mark Evans, owner of Vaughn Small Engine, the lawn mower repair business near the intersection.
“That corner has always been sharper than sharp,” said Evans, 52, who’s lived near the intersection since he was wee high.
Not every idea results in change.
The state decided not to take West Fork resident Milton Jones’ advice about College Avenue in Fayetteville. Jones, whose idea was in The Guru’s column last week, wanted to force traffic going south on College Avenue to move to the left lane so drivers on the Fulbright Expressway could more easily merge to go south on College Avenue.
“The investigator noted that the reduction of southbound traffic to one lane, as suggested by your reader, would have an adverse impact on the capacity of the roadway and create an undesirable weaving condition between the ramp and Milsap Road for southbound traffic attempting to turn right onto Milsap and for traffic from Fulbright attempting to turn left onto Milsap,” writes Joe Shipman, the Highway Department’s district engineer at Fort Smith.
Robert J. Smith, aka The Guru, writes on traffic issues in Northwest Arkansas on Fridays. He can be reached at nwaonline.com/guru or [email protected]