The southern portion of Interstate 49 ends in Texarkana, about five miles northeast of this sign, before beginning again in Fort Smith nearly 200 road miles away.
Curt Green laughs about the lack of progress on the completion of Interstate 49 in western Arkansas.
After so many years and so many speeches and so much lobbying, what else can a grown man do? I-49, the dream of many, a highway that would connect New Orleans with Canada, continues to languish in a mostly-built-but-not-quite state of limbo.
“You want to talk about the greatest economic growth Arkansas could have in the next 30 years?” Green asks rhetorically. Green is the president of the multistate I-49 International Coalition. “We’ve been fighting it for 30 years.”
The interstate has been completed, for the most part, between Kansas City — where I-49 connects with the existing interstate system that runs into Canada — and southern Missouri. The interstate is mostly completed between Lafayette, Louisiana, and Shreveport and on to Texarkana.
Work is ongoing on the Bella Vista Bypass that will connect with the portion of I-49 running through northwest Arkansas to I-40 in Fort Smith.
The Arkansas Department of Transportation commissioned a feasibility study last year to see if tolls could help raise enough funds to build a 13.7-mile stretch that would connect I-49 just outside of Alma with state Highway 22 in Barling to the south. The cost of the project is expected to be more than $500 million because it includes a bridge over the Arkansas River.
That stretch would then — eventually — connect with the future construction of I-49 leading down to Texarkana. The interstate’s largest missing link is the 150 or so miles between Fort Smith and Texarkana, a stretch currently served by U.S. Highway 71.
The expected price tag to connect Fort Smith with Texarkana is more than $2 billion. It’s an amount that neither the federal nor the state government has, so everyone waits. And waits.
Danny Straessle said the state of Arkansas wants the interstate completed just as much as anyone else. Straessle, ArDOT’s public information officer, said I-49 is a “conundrum” because everyone wants it but there just isn’t money for it.
“It’s something we’d like to see done but, when compared to other immediate priorities in the state such as taking care of what we already have, it’s just not there,” Straessle said. “There is just very little work being done on it, maybe some environmental work and surveying piece by piece. As far as a concerted large-scale effort to make that happen, it’s just not anywhere near where the I-49 Coalition would like it to be.”
Traffic Choices
The I-49 Coalition has members from three states — Arkansas, Missouri and Louisiana — and Green, the president and chairman, is a real estate investor in Texarkana. He said he actually does much of his deal-making in Texas but understands how important it is to have a north-south route from the important crossroads border town.
The coalition was formed in 2002 and incorporated “international” into its name to remind people that I-49 would connect with Canada. Green said he gives speeches and presentations all over the three-state area to spread the message of funding I-49.
“The coalition’s goal is to remind the politicians and everybody else that it is a great highway, it needs to be funded, and they need to come up with a way to fund it,” Green said. “We are the cheerleaders to complete I-49. We have no official duties other than remind people how important I-49 is to Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri. We have been going for 20-plus years.”
Interstate 49’s completion in Arkansas is of utmost importance to Texarkana, which sits on I-30 between Dallas and Little Rock and also on U.S. Highway 59, which Texas is expanding to make it more of a main traffic route. Those highways, coupled with I-49 connecting Texarkana with Louisiana, make the border town a choke point.
“Traffic coming out of Dallas is going to increase by 50 percent in the next 20-30 years,” Green said. “And it all stops in Texarkana and gets on little four-lane Interstate 30, and it can’t handle it. In 20 years, either Interstate 30 has to be six lanes, and I-40 will have to be eight lanes.
“We’re calling I-49 the pop-off valve. If we can take 49 up north, then a good portion of that traffic will go north straight up through western Arkansas. It’s not only a great economic tool, but if we don’t get something done, we are going to have a traffic jam on I-30 like we have never seen before.”
Money Woes
Straessle said it is doubtful that tolling will be the funding savior some expect, but the research process gives ArDOT a chance to engage with the public about I-49. Ivy Owen, the executive director of the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority in Fort Smith, is a strong proponent of charging tolls to fund the 13.7-mile stretch from Alma to Barling.
ArDot estimates that its revenue for the next 10 years will be approximately $4.5 billion, while it predicts $9 billion in needed improvement projects. A half-cent sales tax passed in 2012 generates approximately $1.8 billion in revenue a year, Straessle said, so it is obvious that Arkansas doesn’t have the ready means to do everything it wants or needs to.
“A billion-dollar project is nothing to Texas,” Straessle said. “That pretty much shuts down conversation on the thing because there is no money to do it. There is always opportunity, and we continue to update our estimates and planning toward making this happen. If an earmark were to fall out of Congress and land in Arkansas, we would want to be ready.”
Straessle also notes that the state already has a major project in a stretch of Interstate 69 in southeast Arkansas. The federal fuel tax hasn’t been raised since 1993 and Arkansas’ tax hasn’t been raised since 2001; the money from those taxes is what pays for a vast majority of infrastructure.
“These two projects are both very heavy lifts,” Straessle said. “Arkansas cannot do it alone. [I-49] is possible but it is quite the herculean effort in this day and age when funds are scarce and the needs are so great.”
Arkansas ranks 18th among states for the most highway miles within its borders but doesn’t receive nearly as high a percentage in funding, Green said.
“We are upside down,” Green said. “It’s not that the highway department doesn’t do a good job, but you can only stretch a dollar so far. What do you do? You do the best you can.
“I’m as anti-tax as anybody you will ever find. I’m telling you an increase in the gas tax is justified, and I would happily pay it.”
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