FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (KFSM) — If you drive around Mount Comfort Road in the mornings and afternoons you know how backed up traffic can get, but that will soon be coming to an end thanks to the Rupple Road extension being close to opening up for drivers.
Rupple Road from Mount Comfort Road to Starry Night is getting realigned to turn Rupple Road into an alternative north-south corridor.
Sara Chance lives and works off mount comfort road and can't wait for it to be open.
“I think it will be very beneficial, once it opens in the near hopefully in the near future it will be open. It looks really attractive, but the current intersection is not very safe, so I think it will be a great addition to this area and the traffic flow,” Chance said.
Fayetteville City Engineer Chris Brown said the goal is to have traffic switched over to the new road by the first of June. He said many drivers use Mount Comfort to bypass other busier interchanges.
“They are coming up and turning right which is ok in the mornings, but the left turns in the afternoon really causes that traffic to stack up. So having traffic come to the signal light, have a turn lane will make everything flow much smoother,” Brown said.
Brown said this piece of Rupple costs $5.6 million with 80% of the cost being paid for with federal aid. He said the bridge alone was $2 million.
“All of those retaining walls were very expensive as well, so it`s a short section but a very important section to clean up a really substandard intersection that we had and it`s an important piece of that Rupple Road corridor,” Brown said.
After this portion of Rupple is complete then the city will start working on another section of the road to the north that will be made possible because of the bond issue that recently passed.
Once the north connection of Rupple Road is complete you will be able to drive from Martin Luther King road to Highway 112.