Highway 70 east opens in time for summer
State and local officials joined the Arkansas Department of Transportation Friday to cut the ribbon on a $78.5 million project to widen a 17.8-mile stretch of Highway 70 east.
The project, which widened the roadway to four travel lanes with a continuous center turn lane, was completed three months ahead of schedule, just in time for summer tourism in Hot Springs.
According to a fact sheet on the project, in addition to widening the highway, curves were straightened, hills were flattened, and the overall geometrics of the highway were changed. The project included the installation of a traffic signal at Highway 128 and reconstructed and widened bridges at Cedar Creek, Ten Mile Creek and Caney Creek.
ArDOT said a portion of the project was funded through the Connecting Arkansas Program, a 10-year, half-cent sales tax voters approved in 2012 to improve highways and fund infrastructure projects in the state.
In January 2016, the Highway 70 widening project was restructured to be completed in one phase instead of a two. ArDOT Director Scott Bennett told the crowd at Friday’s ceremony, held at the Highway 70 east rest area, that the 18-mile project was completed in about 15 months, “just over a mile a month that we widened.”
The project was completed, Bennett said, by McGeorge Contracting Co., which built the original highway in the 1950s.
“All these years later they were able to come back and provide an improved highway for us,” he said.
Bennett said the credit for completing this project early goes to his department’s staff and the contractor, as greater emphasis was put on scheduling.
“Our emphasis really with the contractor was making sure when they got in and we were putting traffic in a work zone that they had enough crews here, that they were working the whole time and that even though people were in a work zone that they could see progress being made,” Bennett said.
“This is really a part of a new emphasis around the state. Better scheduling of the highway projects with the contractors so we make sure when they come in, they stay in, get the work completed and then get out so we can have timely completion of projects.”
The project also took on an added urgency following a series of fatal crashes on the roadway. The newspaper reported on Dec. 22, 2015, that 12 fatalities had occurred on Highway 70 that year, with seven occurring inside Garland County.
“In the year or so before the job was led to contract, there were 10 fatal crashes,” Bennett said. “What you have to know about those is that this highway has been in place for years. We
built it in the 1950s, we added passing lanes in the 1970s, and the majority of those crashes there was another contributing factor in those crashes and not the highway. That was a concern. Speeding was a concern. State police came out and gave a higher level of patrol to the area to try to make sure people were driving the speed limit and being as safe as possible.
“Now we’ve got a wider highway with wider shoulders that should be more efficient. We’ve straightened out some of the curves, flattened some of the hills, and that will make it safer and more efficient. So hopefully people will be able to drive the speed limit, if people drive the speed limit you’re still going to make it where you’re going faster than you did before this job was completed.”
Lt. Darran Austin with Arkansas State Police Troop A in Little Rock said with the widened highway travel should be safer for the public. State police will continue regular patrolling of the area, as well as special enforcement operations, he said.
“It will be less congested but there’s also the attempt for the motored public to travel faster,” Austin said. “You can expect to see troopers with the state police patrolling Highway 70 in their normal patrol functions. We will also have special enforcement operations that will be conducted that puts multiple troopers or officers on the roadway during a certain enforcement time period.”
This week, Austin said troopers have held four special enforcement operations which have yielded 108 citations, 63 of which were speed-related. Troopers gave 96 warnings for violations this week, as well.
“We ask the public traveling this roadway, if you see any dangerous driving habits while you’re traveling, please contact Troop A Headquarters, Troop K Headquarters, call your local sheriff’s office or just simply dial 911,” Austin said. “Our goal for Highway 70, just like all other highways in the state of Arkansas is to make them safer, safe travel for the public.”
The completion of the project comes in time for summer travel, right on the heels of the Memorial Day holiday. Visit Hot Springs CEO Steve Arrison told The Sentinel-Record on Thursday that the project means improved access for visitors.
“Any time you improve the access to your destination, it’s good for everybody,” he said. “Before, we had one really good way to get to Hot Springs. Now people coming up from Dallas have a way to get here, people coming down from Little Rock have a way to get here.”
Arrison said he’s often asked if the construction hindered visitation numbers, but he said he has not seen an impact.
“I think our numbers have still been very good even with the construction,” he said. “Talking to local operators, some seem to think it had an impact. Who knows what our numbers would have been if it weren’t under construction.”
Hot Springs Mayor Pat McCabe echoed those sentiments Friday when he said the improved roads will bring increased commerce.
“We all know that improved roads bring increased commerce to communities all along the line of that improvement,” he said. “We also recognize that individual and family travel up and down the road will be increased and all this is with improved safety. For that, we are very pleased.”
Pastor Greg Spann of the Cross Bar C Cowboy Church said the community along Highway 70 has remained positive about the construction and welcomed the highway workers for the duration of the project.
“When the construction started, we were concerned about what the traffic would do to our attendance,” he said. “But we decided we could take a negative outlook on it and complain or we could pull together as a community and try to make things as good as we possibly could for those who were having to work out here. It paid great rewards for us. We have met some wonderful people.”
Spann said, on a daily basis, members of the community got to know the construction workers who “were out here working and traveling back and forth, leaving their families to come up here and work for a week and go home.”
“And we saw their appreciation they were having for this community because the people were starting to embrace them,” he said. “We got to be with them during their safety meetings and we got to watch them take pride in what they were doing for this community. Any time you make progress, there’s a cost involved in it and the cost to this community through here was a bit of a cost in economics. But it was an investment not in something that was going to destroy but it’s going to invest in the community both in Saline and in Hot Springs.”
Bennett said that toward the end this year ArDOT will see another project let to contract — a widening of Interstate 30 from Sevier Street in Benton to Highway 70.
“It is a big job — between $75 or $100 million,” he said. “There will be bridge replacement over the Saline River; we’re going to rebuild a couple of interchanges. We’re going to do our best to keep two lanes of traffic open at all times which is what they have now.
“It will be in a work zone so we’ll reduce the speed a little bit, but if people pay attention and take their time, that job will go smoothly and we’ll be able to have six lanes from Little Rock down to Highway 70, five lanes here, still have five lanes from Highway 270 from Malvern to Hot Springs. We think it’s great for Hot Springs to have so much connectivity.”