The Little Rock Port Authority wants to dust off the old South Loop road project and look at a scaled-back version as an answer to the increasing amount of traffic in and out of the Arkansas River port.
The port has two entrances, both on its north side and accessed by Interstate 440. One is at Fourche Dam Pike and the other is at Lindsey Road.
Bryan Day, the authority's executive director, said trucks "can sneak through College Station although we discourage that because it is a neighborhood."
In recent years, the port has been acquiring land to its south, almost 2,000 acres in all, so Day said it makes sense to start looking at a way to better serve that side of the port.
Traffic is manageable now, but whether that continues will be determined as soon as this summer when Day said the Amazon.com fulfillment center opens.
By that time, the port tenants will be employing 7,000 people. Truck traffic also stands to increase.
"Traffic count for trucks is significant and it's going to grow," Day said. "We're chasing other prospects. We have one now that's pretty significant that will impact truck traffic."
Day made the comments at a meeting of the Metroplan board of directors, who approved his request to have the staff of the long-term transportation planning agency for the region partner with the port and other agencies in developing a strategy and cost estimates to update a 2006 study of the feasibility of the South Loop.
"In looking at our long term plan, we felt that we needed to determine whether it was warranted to have southern loop or southern route and if it is warranted -- we believe it will be -- we need to determine exactly where that route needs to go and put it on the appropriate transportation plans so that future growth, expansion and development will not impact that route," Day told the board.
The Arkansas Department of Transportation has held little interest in adding mileage to the system it says it is struggling to maintain.
But Day said he wants to look at alternative funding sources, but to do that he needs a defined route and studies establishing the need for the route, which he sees as an economic development project as much as a transportation project.
One of the factors for the 2006 study included Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce officials who wanted the South Loop to open up land for economic development.
"The other thing I will say is when we land a major prospect like Amazon, with the help of the city, the county and the state, we got federal funds so if we had a plan and we had a defined route, it might be that some monies that wouldn't normally be available for transportation improvements could be accessed related to and economic development project," Day said.
The older study looked at a larger South Loop that extended west from Interstate 530. Day and other officials see it limited east from I-530, through the port and connecting to I-440.
The previous study also looked at an all new route as well as a route that used existing roadways. The latter is likely the case in the study the port wants, said Casey Covington, the deputy director for Metroplan.
"On the eastern section it is likely that the South Loop would use several existing roadways, including Fourche Dam Pike and Thibault Roads," he said. "The study will confirm this and may recommend improvements to these roadways as part of the corridor."
After the board approved the proposal, Covington said agency staff would bring back a final partnering agreement and the financial contributions of partnering agencies for the board to consider.