Highway chief: I-69 in Arkansas is far off without big bucks

The Federal Highway Administration approved the I-69 route through much of Arkansas in 2006. Estimates then put the highway's 185-mile Arkansas portion at $1.7 billion; current estimates project the cost of that portion at $3.5 billion. The 2,730-mile full stretch of highway is now estimated to cost $28 billion to $30 billion.

By TOM PARSONS
The Associated Press

7/29/2009

WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. — Arkansas' top highway official says the state's portion of Interstate Highway 69 will be built on only a piecemeal basis unless the federal government makes a major financial commitment to the route.

"This project is going to be a long time coming," Dan Flowers told lawmakers Tuesday.

Flowers, director of the state Highway and Transportation Department, made his comments at a joint meeting of the House Transportation Committee and the legislature's Joint Performance Review Committee, held at the Southland Park greyhound track.

The Federal Highway Administration approved the I-69 route through much of Arkansas in 2006. Estimates then put the highway's 185-mile Arkansas portion at $1.7 billion; current estimates project the cost of that portion at $3.5 billion, Flowers said. The 2,730-mile full stretch of highway is now estimated to cost $28 billion to $30 billion, Flowers told the legislators.

According to Flowers, the I-69 route from Canada to Mexico is one of six Corridors of the Future designated by federal highway officials in 1993.

Of those six corridors, I-69 is the only one not completed and carrying heavy traffic, Flowers said. The other corridors are highways that were part of the original interstate plan drawn up in the late 1950s, he said.

According to Flowers, the original interstate plan focused more on east-west routes than on north-south highways, but transportation experts now realize the need for a major north-south route in the middle of the country.

I-69 now connects Indianapolis with the Canadian border. Plans call for the interstate to extend south— cutting through most of the Mississippi Delta region, including Arkansas.

The Arkansas section would run from U.S. Highway 65 just north of McGehee, near the Mississippi-Arkansas border, to U.S. Highway 82 west of El Dorado before continuing south into Louisiana. Plans also call for an extension of Interstate Highway 530 south of Pine Bluff.

If the highway is to be built piecemeal, Flowers said, the process will be helped by already designated "sections of independent utility" that will allow officials to justify spending on individual portions aimed at serving smaller areas.

An example, he said, is the Monticello Bypass on which work has begun in southeast Arkansas. That "section of independent utility" eventually will become part of I-69's route through Arkansas, Flowers said.

Another such section, he said, is the Great River Bridge that will link central Mississippi with southeast Arkansas across the Mississippi River. That bridge, he said, would greatly boost commerce between the two states.

Design work on the bridge is essentially complete, he said, and his agency has begun buying right of way for the approaches. But unlike the Monticello bypass, Flowers said, the bridge won't get built anytime soon because of its cost — a total of $1.3 billion, with Arkansas' share estimated at $909 million.

"We can't scare up that much money," Flowers said, and that puts actual work on the bridge far in the future because federal highway laws now require a specific financing plan for any project costing more than a half-billion dollars. Without a major infusion of federal funds, he said, no such plan is possible.

Kevin Jones of The Trucker staff can be reached for comment at kevinj@thetrucker.com.

Follow The Trucker on Twitter at www.twitter.com/truckertalk.