State dashboard offers bridge, road data

Condition of structures, job status for construction projects now viewable

There are 12,808 bridges that motorists drive across in Arkansas; 7,358 are stateowned, and 327 are located in Little Rock.

Of those 327 bridges in Little Rock, 150 are in “good con- dition,” 169 are in “fair condition,” and eight are deemed to be in “poor condition.”

In total, 696 bridges in Arkansas are rated as being in poor condition.

The information is available through a new portal and websites the Arkansas Department of Transportation has unveiled that allows Arkansans to track the progress of projects and pavement conditions across the state.

The portal, called the Transportation Performance Dashboard, also leads to a Job Status app that provides information about the status of ARDOT construction projects.

For the 30 Crossing project in the Little Rock/North Little Rock, construction on the south Interstate 630 terminal is projected to be complete by Feb. 8, 2025. Construction of the bridge portion over the Arkansas River is projected to be finished by July 19, 2025.

The main dashboard is led by three interactive gauges that track the conditions of bridges, interstates and non-interstate national highways.

Green represents good conditions, orange is for fair conditions and red symbolizes poor conditions.

State transportation agency spokesperson Dave Parker said that while these bridges have “poor” designations, they’re still safe to travel on.

“It doesn’t mean they should be shut down; it means they’re requiring maintenance and that’s what they’ll be getting,” Parker said. “They’ll get the attention they need.”

As of Thursday, the bridge condition gauge — which reflects the percent by bridge deck area of 2,307 bridges that are on Arkansas’ Na

tional Highway System — sat at 97%.

Of those, 44% are in good condition, 53% are in fair condition and 3% are in poor condition.

“These ratings are determined using federal standards,” said agency Director Lorie Tudor in a news release. “Seventy-five percent of our budget goes toward taking care of the roads we already have. We’re proud of our pavement preservation efforts across the state and are excited to have a tool that shares where we stand in that continuous effort.”

According to the website, new bridges are designed to last at least 75 years. However, the majority of bridges in Arkansas were designed for a 50-year design life and a “significant number of bridges remain in service for much longer.”

The “typical” inspection frequency for bridges is once every two years.

“We’ve been working for a number of years to improve our customer service experience here at the [Arkansas Department of Transportation] and we want to make sure we’re communicating how we’re doing,” said Jared Wiley, the state agency’s chief engineer for pre-construction. “At the same time, we went [through an] efficiency review and one of the recommendations that came out of that to the Highway Commission Review and Advisory Subcommittee was that we put out KPIs — key performance indicators — that measure how well we’re doing in managing our assets and communicate those to the public.

“So that effort culminated in this dashboard that we’ve unveiled.”

The portal also leads to an Interactive Bridge Dashboard, where one can find updated conditions for the bridges in the states.

Included in the eight “poor” bridges is the Scott Hamilton Drive overpass in southwest Little Rock.

Built in 1961, the bridge’s deck condition is rated at a 4, meaning it has “widespread moderate or isolated major defects” and the “strength and/or performance of the component is affected.”

The superstructure was rated at a 6, or “satisfactory,” and the substructure was rate at a 5, or “fair.”

The newest bridge to have a “poor” rating is the Interstate 440 bridge that crosses Lindsey Road.

Built in 1977, the bridge that sees daily traffic of 24,628 vehicles has a deck condition of 5, the superstructure is a 4 and the substructure is a 6.

The oldest bridges rated as poor are sections located 0.6 miles south of Arkansas 365.

Built in 1960 — when a record 21 bridges were built in the city — their deck condition is a 6, superstructure is a 4 and substructure is a 5.

For those curious, the oldest bridge in the city, according to the transportation department’s site, is a small concrete bridge on Arkansas 5, just north of the former Dodd Elementary School. It is rated as “fair.”

According to the Performance Dashboard, there are 768 miles of interstate in the state.

Of that, 98% of it is rated in good or fair condition, while 2% is rated poor.

As for non-interstate national highway, there are 2,564 miles of it.

The Arkansas transportation department categorizes 94.24% of it as being in good or fair condition, while 5.76% of it is in poor condition.

The portal’s numbers on public roadway deaths are available by year, from 2018 to 2022.

The total for 2022 — 647 — was the first year-over-year drop in that time.

There were 516 deaths in 2018 and 693 in 2021.

Data available in the main interface “is updated annually,” according to Wiley.

The information on the interactive websites for bridges and construction projects will be updated more frequently.

“Each year we compile it all, we analyze it, we verify and then we report it to the Federal Highway Administration,” Wiley said. “We may end up updating one graphic in May, for example, and the next graphic could be updated in January.”

The next step is having info like the interactive construction map integrated into the transportation department’s iDrive Arkansas site/app, making it mobile friendly.

“We should see that new construction project status website go live late this year,” Wiley said. “This will cover under-construction or recently completed projects. We will work to build out additional information as time progresses.”

At an April 4 meeting of the Arkansas Highway Commission, a member of the commission asked about the success of the “Ask ARDOT” initiative, which allows people to submit inquiries to the agency, including about road conditions.

The transportation department has received more than 10,000 inquiries since February 2023, with an average of more than 700 contacts from each month.

When asked about the average time it takes to respond to a submission, a transportation department official said “getting answers back, it’s no more than probably a few days or a week before we’re able to give them the information, and sometimes the answer is ‘we need to look into this’ and other times we know exactly what they’re asking.”