ARKANSAS, USA — The Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission passed a resolution requesting that the Arkansas Department of Transportation and the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment nominate U.S. Highway 412 from the Oklahoma Arkansas state line to I-49 in Springdale as an alternative fuel corridor for electric vehicles.
“Why it’s important for U.S. 412, it is on the Arkansas state freight plan as a critical freight corridor, so it provides that connectivity over to Tulsa,” said Tim Conklin.
The 22 miles stretch of the U.S. 412 line is also expected to someday be part of the interstate. Assistant Director of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission says Oklahoma already has a pending designation for their portion of U.S. 412. He says it’s really important to have this designation because dollars of federal funds will be released to build out this network.
“Interstate highways don’t begin and end at state lines and a national EV charging infrastructure network should not begin and end at state lines. It needs to connect to the overall system and U.S. 412 is part of an overall highway system that’s very important to Northwest Arkansas,” he said.
This designation means there will be public places with DC fast chargers every 50 miles within one mile of the interstate.
Rob Smith with the Northwest Arkansas Council says Northwest Arkansas is home to about 39% of electric cars in the state. He says while most of those people will charge their cars at home, we need these fast chargers for people who visit. He says the importance of this designation is even more timely because of the new electric car company Canoo that will soon call Bentonville home.
“Additionally, their primary manufacturing operation is at the mid-America park halfway between Tulsa and Siloam Springs, so having all of U.S. 412 from Tulsa to Northwest Arkansas through Northwest Arkansas be an alternative fuels corridor just fits with what our region ought to be thinking about,” Smith said.
The Arkansas Department of Transportation says they are not opposed to Highway 412 being nominates as an alternative fuel corridor at some point, but right now our focus per the federal guidelines is on our current interstate system. We need to maintain flexibility with building out our interstates before moving on to additional routes.
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