NW ARKANSAS:Ozarks Airport Toll Road

They’ve managed to garner some large investments in transport recently that make it much more accessible, most notably I-540/US-71 on which $540m was spent to complete the 120km (75mi) motorway standard road from this northwest corner city of Bentonville down to I-40 at Fort Smith.

The highway designations are throughly screwed up in the southern half, but the various local agencies are collaborating in the development of a major new north-south corridor Winnepeg Manitoba via I-29 to Kansas City, US-71 through western Missouri through Joplin MO (at I-44), picking up I-540 here in NW AK, then south of I-40 there’s a very expensive 200km (125mi) segment of US-71 planned for upgrade to motorway as far as Texarkana at I-30. A further 120km (75mi) to Shreveport LA and you hit the existing I-49 which takes you to the Gulf of Mexico port cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The route would also benefit by some of the Mississippi valley and Shreveport-Houston-Laredo upgrades being worked on as part of Corridor 18/20 or I-69.

Last November they just opened up a major new airport for the Ozarks. They’ve called it Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport (NWARA). What a blah name! Why not Ozarks International Airport? Anyway they’ve got a nice logo and decent terminal building and a great big 8,800' main runway and lots of widen open space to grow. 8,800' can handle all but fully loaded 747s in summer. NWARA is now the closest commercial service airport for about 400k pop with direct daily or better service to major centers such as Chicago and Atlanta.

Rather than whine about the slowness of federal and state funds for improving road connections to the new airport, the NWARA authority has decided to build a toll road, designated AR-264. TEA21 allocated them $16m for the project but it is not enough and it is spread over 5 years. They want it built more and faster than that, and they plan to use the TEA21 money to help service the early toll road debt.

The exact route isn’t certain because the toll road has to plug into the new alignment of east-west US-412, a northern bypass of Springdale. This is to be a new 2x2-lane motorway which will probably be built simultaneously with the airport toll road. Different alternates for US-412 bypass road are in the study process now. US-412 will provide good connections to I-540 and points east.

A preliminary study of the AR-264 toll road suggests it will be 12km (7.4mi) long and 2x1-lanes only, to begin with. But they’ll design it to full motorway standard with access control and grade separation from the start. Right-of-way will be acquired and over-bridges built for a second 2-lanes, when traffic justifies it. Construction costs for earthworks and pavement is put at $380k/lane-km ($625k/lane-mi), bridges at $1.25m ea. 91m (300') wide right of way will be bought at $10k/ac for $2.7m. With design, project management, studies and a contingency factor the project will need $19.6m. $26m of bonds are envisaged to supplement the govt funds under TEA21 and see the project through its early years.

Based on projected airplane travel the report estimates traffic on the access road will be 4k to 7k/day on opening rising to 7k to 14k/day in 2019. At a toll of $1.00 this will produce revenues of $1.4m to $2.7m on opening rising to $2.5m to $5m in 2019. Scott Van Laningham at the airport is in charge of the getting the toll road built. (Contact 501 205 0200 www.nwara.com)