GRAVETTE, Ark. — A study shows that there is a long-term need to improve north and south travel between Gravette, Centerton, Highfill, and Tontitown.
Tuesday night's meeting was the beginning stage of a project that could address that issue.
The Arkansas Department of Transportation (ARDOT) says that there are seven phases to the project:
- A high-level corridor need and feasibility study
- Identification and consideration of alternative corridor alignments
- Identification of individual potential construction projects
- Additional project-level studies of individual construction projects
- Initial project development
- Detailed environmental analysis per federal regulation
- Design and right-of-way acquisition.
"In the last six-eight months we've now heard from more people who live near Highway 59, Highway 72 due to concerns about all the traffic," says Public Information Officer Dave Parker.
The study shows that there is a long-term need to improve north and south travel between cities like Gravette, Centerton, Highfill, and Tontitown.
"Down the road, we've got to do something to alleviate the traffic here in the northwest part of the state, primarily Benton County," Parker explained.
As of now, there isn't a direct way to travel between those four cities, making it hard at times for residents to travel north and south.
"We just think it's necessary. We go to Centerton, we go to Bentonville and nearly every time we go we see new subdivisions," Residents Williams and Anita Stanton said.
The Stanton family went to the Ardot meetings to see if this would benefit their commute or not.
"We learned that they've relocated where the works are going to be, to actually close to where we live... We're concerned because when we leave our road turning left we can't get out for several minutes sometimes," Anita Stanton said.
The Stantons live in Hiwasse, and they say it's difficult to travel to amenities in larger cities like Fayetteville or Bentonville.
"We can jump on right here on I-49 and be in Joplin in 45 minutes, I can get on there and go to Fayetteville in 45 minutes, but it's way less stressful going to Joplin, and it shouldn't be," William Stanton recalled.
With the region growing every day, they are glad ARDOT officials are starting early on planning the roads to match the region's population.
"It's nice to see that they're trying to take some preventative action before it gets to be a bigger problem," said William.
Parker says there is no state funding attached to this project, and the new roadway will take years to plan and develop.
he new road would primarily be used by residents of the adjacent communities with little to no traffic according to Parker. The roadway would reportedly be built to an arterial standard (such as Highway 101 or 112) but he explains what's next in the process.
“We’ll take all the public input here; we’ll present that in addition to our findings to the highway commission in the next 30 - 40 days,” Parker said.
ARDOT will host more meetings Tuesday, June 5 in cave springs at Lakeview baptist church and Wednesday in Centerton at the Centerton community room-- both meetings are from 4 - 7 p.m.
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