Funny story last night on KARK: Six years and $125 million invested in the new Big Rock Interchange at Interstates 430 and 630 and, guess what, people are griping about traffic congestion.
Sure. The Highway Department knew creating that big auto mover would draw still more traffic to feeder roads. So the next project is to add a lane to Interstate 630 to ease THAT congestion.
Any resemblance in this scenario to the Interstate 30 widening project through the heart of Little Rock to 10 lanes — a football field width of concrete through the heart of the city — is of course precisely the point.
Expert after expert has said the massive 30 Crossing pavement project is only going to induce still more demand on feeder roads (including I-630, naturally) that will require billions more dollars in road widening to “ease congestion.”
You could approach the project in a wholly different way — a boulevard through town, for example. But the Freeway Department has decreed that’s not how we do things in Arkansas. The local political establishment has fallen in behind the freeway builders in return for a few small concessions.
Those concession don’t so far include spending a dime of state and federal money to ameliorate the pigeon-poop-laden concrete crime cavern to be created beneath the project, conceived primarily to get people to and from flight subdivisions a few minutes faster.