Yellow Light (Editorial)

Everyone loves highways, the newer and smoother the better, but everyone seems to hate the Arkansas Highway & Transportation Department. Even before the crisis in highway funding, AHTD had to try to make the dollars available satisfy every corner of a 53,000-square-mile state made more challenging by rivers, streams, mountains and big, big rocks.

As soon as the department’s design for modernizing Interstate 30 through the heart of Little Rock became public, the critics started to criticize. The estimated price tag, $450 million, was said to be an understatement. Ten lanes of traffic were said to be too many, and the bigger, more modern interchange just south of the Arkansas River could divide and disrupt downtown development as Cromwell Architects Engineers and Moses Tucker Real Estate are gearing up to extend their redevelopment magic east of the interstate.

Now comes the back-and-forth: People who don’t want more of Little Rock to be devoted to roadway are trying to force suburbanites back into the city. No, the suburbanites just want to pave over Little Rock so they can get the heck out of Dodge. There is tension there.

AHTD has extended the comment period on the I-30 project until Dec. 6. Whether that will drum up more support or more opposition is anyone’s guess. But from where we sit, just blocks from the terrifying Cantrell Road on-ramp and smack between the River Market and the Main Street Creative Corridor, it seems like there should be some compromise — a smarter, modern interchange that doesn’t put the needs of those traveling through Little Rock ahead of the investments, past and future, of the people who want to see Arkansas’ capital thrive.

AHTD is planning to spend a lot of money in Little Rock, and you can bet there are parts of the state that would love to have this problem. But that kind of money needs to be spent carefully because a mistake could be even more costly in the long run.