Special to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette - 10-13-2015 - The Interstate 30 interchange serving downtown Little Rock as it looks today.

Engineers working on the Interstate 30 corridor project are looking at eliminating the Second Street ramps and moving access to and from downtown Little Rock south to Fourth Street or beyond, the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department announced Thursday.

Keeping the access to downtown but shifting it away from the bustling River Market entertainment district has been requested by city officials, the department said in a news release. The resulting engineer work means the next public meeting to discuss the project, scheduled for Feb. 23, has been postponed until spring.

"Sufficient time was not available to evaluate this new request before the previously scheduled February 23 public involvement meeting," the department said. "Once the 30 Crossing project team completes this evaluation, a new date will be announced for the rescheduled meeting."

The announcement is the latest turn in the project to reduce congestion and improve safety in the congested 6.7-mile corridor between Interstate 530 in Little Rock and Interstate 40 in North Little Rock.

"What it shows is we are evaluating input from the public and that we are not operating in a vacuum," said Danny Straessle, a spokesman for the department.

The project includes replacing the I-30 bridge over the Arkansas River, as well as a short segment of I-40 between I-30 and U.S. 67/167 in North Little Rock.

Much of that stretch is more than 50 years old and has outdated interchanges and little in the way of shoulders. The river bridge carries about 125,000 vehicles daily.

While many have applauded a 10-lane alternative and other changes that came out of a yearlong evaluation process, others have criticized the estimated $600 million project as too massive and say it would hurt the ongoing revitalization of downtown Little Rock.

The criticism has prompted engineers to take another look at an eight-lane alternative and evaluate a proposal from a Little Rock architect to transform the corridor into a tree-lined boulevard with intersections.

They also have spent a considerable amount of effort on the Cantrell Road interchange, which has proved to be a particularly vexing problem, given the amount of pedestrian traffic generated by the River Market District and surrounding development.

A proposal to turn Second and Fourth streets into three-lane thoroughfares for traffic getting onto and off the interstate from downtown was met with loud opposition in the fall.

So, engineers revisited the idea of building a tunnel for traffic under the River Market District between LaHarpe Boulevard and I-30, Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola said Thursday.

But, Stodola said, the new proposal to shift the interchange away from the River Market District came after he and Jerry Holder spent about 2½ hours last month driving back and forth through the downtown area, and they agreed that moving the interchange warranted further study.

Holder is the top consulting engineer for the Highway Department's $1.8 billion Connecting Arkansas Program, which includes the I-30 corridor and other projects of regional significance around the state.

Stodola said that by shifting the interchange to Fourth and Capitol Avenue or to Third and Sixth streets, traffic would be more evenly dispersed on the city's downtown grid rather than being concentrated at LaHarpe and East Markham Street/President Clinton Avenue and Cumberland Street.

Eliminating the interchange at the River Market District would create a wide-open plaza east from Cumberland to the Clinton Presidential Center, Stodola said, adding that it would an "unbelievable marvel for the city."

The mayor said he was pleased that the Feb. 23 meeting was delayed to allow more time to evaluate the idea.

"I'm happy to hear it," he said. "I hope they can make it work. It could be a good compromise."

The project engineers already had plenty on their plate before the latest proposal from the city.

They have been working on re-evaluating an eight-lane alternative that had been eliminated as a reasonable option last May.

That re-evaluation came at the request last fall of the Federal Highway Administration, which only months before had approved a study recommendation that the corridor, now six lanes, be widened to 10 lanes.

In the 10-lane alternative, one lane in both directions would be designated from just south of Broadway in North Little Rock to Cantrell Road in Little Rock to serve as downtown collector/distributor lanes.

A barrier would separate those designated lanes from the main lanes and allow vehicles to operate at slower speeds than on the main lanes.

A more in-depth evaluation of the eight-lane alternative was urged by Metroplan, the long-range transportation planning agency for central Arkansas. Metroplan has a long-standing policy of limiting area freeways to six lanes.

The engineers also are evaluating the proposal from Little Rock architect Tom Fennell, who wants to see the corridor transformed into a tree-lined boulevard with intersections that, Fennell said, would take motorists through the city rather than past it.

Fennell's proposal includes many ideas that opponents of the 10-lane alternative have discussed. In addition to redeveloping I-30 as an "at-grade" boulevard, the proposal would restructure the I-30/I-630 interchange, rebrand Interstate 440 as the new I-30, and add a new Arkansas River crossing on the west side of downtown.

Straessle said it wasn't out of the question that "elements" of Fennell's proposal, called Arkansas Boulevard, would be incorporated into the corridor where possible.

"My hope is they can design [the corridor] in such a way to make it convertible" to a boulevard in the future, Fennell said Thursday.

"They have the talent and the engineers to try and make the corridor better."

A Section on 02/05/2016