Regional planners and officials in several cities along Arkansas 265 want to create a shared vision of what the road will be like as it is built out over the next several decades.
The road, also known as Dick Trammel Highway in honor of the former state highway commissioner, has been improved piecemeal over the last several decades. It serves travelers going north and south on the metro areas's east side, but it's a mishmash of designs and the width varies from city to city.
Amenities for bikes and pedestrians also vary by city from none to on-street bike lanes to multiuse trails separated from traffic.
"For those who travel up and down 265, they see different designs from Fayetteville all the way through Rogers," said Tim Conklin, assistant director at the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission. "There's an opportunity to pull everybody together because these facilities do not begin and end in one city. They start in one city and they go through three or four."
Arkansas 265 runs 19 miles from Fayetteville to Rogers, through Springdale and Lowell along the way. Traffic volume varies from 11,000 to 29,000 vehicles a day, depending on what segment of the road is being counted.
From Arkansas 16 in Fayetteville north, the road begins with four lanes with some turn lanes and sidewalks but no bike lanes. It then transitions to a boulevard design with four lanes divided by a median, access management and bike lanes from Township Street to the city limits near Lake Fayetteville. The road goes back to a four-lane section in Springdale with limited turn lanes, then to a three-lane configuration north of its intersection with Arkansas 264, with a bike lane.
Conklin said the three-lane section is recommended to be four or five lanes with a median.
All the different sections of Arkansas 265 are going to be worked on over the next three decades or so, Conklin said.
"We thought it'd be a good idea to have a discussion on what we're trying to do there," he said.
Conklin said planners want to reduce fatalities and serious injuries and improve reliability and overall safety for all users. They also want to separate people and cars and bikes with off-street side paths.
"That's where I think it's heading as we begin this discussion," he said.
Money where your mouth is
John McCurdy, community development director in Rogers, broached the subject with regional planners recently.
"We all understand that it's an existing corridor, but I think the idea and thought for the resolution would be that moving forward we don't add additional signals," McCurdy said at a Technical Advisory Committee meeting. "Add roundabouts instead to keep traffic flowing with controlled access and provide an alternate corridor to 71B and I-49."
McCurdy said Interstate 49 and improvements to Arkansas 112 and Arkansas 265 came about largely because sprawl along U.S. 71B has made the road impractical as a way to move north and south across the region.
"With that commercial development and the traffic, you get the need to control the intersections to be able to cross the street east and west," McCurdy said. "So, because of that, you can't get from Rogers or Bentonville to Fayetteville anymore on 71B, so now we use I-49."
McCurdy said getting 265 extended to downtown Rogers made travel between cities fairly quick and easy, for now.
"That's very fleeting" he said. "If we allow 265 to develop the same way that 71B did over the decades, it will eventually be 71B. That is a foregone conclusion if we just let things happen."
McCurdy said regional planning and the cities agreed when Arkansas 112 gets rebuilt, it will have roundabouts the entire way.
"But, we didn't do that with 265. So, my proposal is that we at least don't allow anymore signalized intersections on 265, and we all agree that we remove signals as we can to make 265 work better," he said.
Rogers recently committed to asking for a grant to convert two signals on 265, at Pleasant Grove Road and New Hope Road, to roundabouts even though it requires the city spend matching money, McCurdy said.
McCurdy said signalized intersections are inefficient, require more traffic lanes be built and can be dangerous.
Patsy Christie, Springdale's planning director, said she would welcome a policy giving unified direction for further work on Arkansas 265, particularly the section from Emma Avenue to U.S. 412.
"If we're going to put a roundabout there, we need to know that before we get too much further along," Christie said. "I think it's worth the cities sitting down and talking about coming up with a joint vision for it. I don't think that hurts anything."
Conklin said he plans to have that conversation with the cities, flesh out ideas and then bring the issue back to Regional Planning staff and the Technical Advisory Committee for further development.
Ribbon cutting wasn't the end
Improvements to Arkansas 112 are still being finalized, but, unlike Arkansas 265, the whole project will have a consistent design from end to end, Conklin said. Arkansas 112 is another north-south corridor on the west side of the metro area.
Conklin said even though the Transportation Department held a ribbon cutting in 2019 to mark extending Arkansas 265 from Arkansas 264 into Rogers, more work is needed to make the road consistent along the entire length, including additional intersections in Lowell and Rogers.
Additional work on Arkansas 265 may have to be done by the individual cities at this point, he said. The Transportation Department has no major projects in its draft transportation plan on 265 in the next four years beyond finding the best location for a new interchange for Arkansas 612, which is the U.S. 412 Springdale Northern Bypass. That interchange is expected to be built in five or 10 years as the new road is built around the northeast side of Springdale.
Most, if not all, of the Arkansas 112 improvement projects are in the state plan for the next four years.
"Personal opinion, I don't think ARDOT's going to come back in and make any significant modifications in the next decade or so," Conklin said. "That's my opinion since we just cut the ribbon. So if changes are occurring, most likely it will be with the cities providing the local match with federal funds or using local funds."
Conklin also urged cities to enter into tri-party agreements for the design and construction of future projects along the road so they are consistent. Those agreements are between a city, Regional Planning and the Arkansas Department of Transportation and prescribe what a project will include.
The section of 265 from Township to the Fayetteville city limits involved a tri-party agreement with Fayetteville chipping in some money to get features it wanted that the state typically doesn't do.
"It was actually built as a boulevard with trees, similar to what we're trying to do with the other 18 miles, pulling these cities together," Conklin said. "Where there are opportunities where it might be improved over the next 25 to 30 years, we might be adding additional median, potentially."
He said any plans for Arkansas 265 should also include consistent bike and pedestrian facilities between the cities.
He asked cities to include a side path along Arkansas 265 in future designs. Fayetteville is already requiring developers put in a side path as part of developments along the road, according to Chris Brown, city engineer.
"The region has built side paths for protection on all our arterials," Conklin said. "There's been a discussion with regard to how we provide something that provides more comfort and less stress for all ages and abilities riding bikes," he said.