Hope Kiwanis Club Hears Highway Program From Frisbee and Chetham

The Hope Kiwanis Club heard from ArDOT District Engineer Steve Frisbee and Construction Engineer William Cheatham. The pair shared lots of information about the highway network in Arkansas including current and future projects. He talked about the interstate rehab program which started in 2012. He noted the program has resulted in 47 projects completed with 294 miles finsihed at a cost of $1 billion dollars. Frisbee said there are five current projects covering 53 miles at a projected cost of $287 million dollars. There are still 52 projects to go in the interstate rehab program (which was projected to take ten years) at a projected cost of $1.3 billion dollars.
Frisbee detailed the “Connecting Arkansas” project, a program approved by Arkansas voters in 2012 that uses a half-cent sales tax to fund $1.8 billion dollars in improvement. This “CAP” program is working to four-lane a number of highways across the state such as US 82 in south Arkansas.
The half-cent sales tax has also sent 30% of the proceeds back to the cities and counties with the entities each receiving 15% each. Frisbee says Hempstead County has received $2.1 million dollars since 2013 and they’re projected to receive another $2 million dollars before the tax sunsets in 2023. The cify of Hope has received $1 million dollars to date and is projected to received another $1 million before the tax sunsets. Governor Asa Hutchinson has a plan to ask the voters to extend the tax.
Frisbee said 6 projects on I-30 have resulted in 42 miles rehabbed on I-30 from Texarkana to the 36 mile marker at a cost of $160 million dollars. Out of that amount there was a $36 million dollar project to rebuild the I-30 bridge. Frisbee says that new bridge is expected to have a 100 year life expectancy. Also, according to Frisbee, I-30 was raised about a foot higher than it had been previously. He said this was spurred on due to flooding that almost submerged I-30 in 2015.
I-30 work from mile marker 36 to Gurdon is currently underway. Frisbee said this work is well ahead of schedule and should cost about $39 million dollars. He said it was supposed to be finished in 2020 but now should be finished in October of this year. Frisbee said the construction company, Redstone, has done a great job and much of the work is being done at night resulting in fewer delays during the day. He said at the end of the job they will rehab the Little Missouri River Bridge.
Frisbee talked about other jobs such as overlay from Hope to Fulton and built a new bridge by Southern Bakeries on 67. He said more overlay work on 67 is coming in town. He also detailed overlay from Hope to Ozan on US 278. Frisbee also talked about the work on Highway 29.
The next project Frisbee discussed was highway 29 and 32 from the ArDot facilities and through Oakhaven to US 278.
Frisbee also talked about the Governor’s proposed highway package.