Making connections

Funding bypass, even in Missouri, is critical

Missouri is not officially the “Show-Me State,” although the phrase can be spotted on the state’s license plates. It’s no doubt surprising to some that Missouri doesn’t have a formal nickname.

All sorts of stories suggest the origins of the commonly used nickname, but there’s general pride in the character it attempts to describe: Missou- rians, they say, aren’t going to be taken in by talk. Way back in 1899 a congressman, Willard Duncan Vandiver, gave a speech in which he said “frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”

For several years, Missouri was busy building up parts of what’s now known as Interstate 49, an increasingly popular north-south route starting in Louisiana and continuing through Arkansas to Kansas City, Mo. Community leaders along the route dream one day of a complete interstate, but today the project’s major gap is between Texarkana and Fort Smith. Another gap, the subject of today’s discussion, exists between Bella Vista and Missouri’s improved portions that are as close to Arkansas as Pineville.

Missouri stands ready to get moving on its side of the state line — right of way acquired, engineering complete — except for one component, funding.

Show them the money, as they say, and the paving can get started.

Now, Arkansas’ interest in this is not minor at all. Establishing that interstate highway between Interstate 40 at Alma and Kansas City isn’t about making it easier to be Chiefs fans. It’s about commerce and connectivity, about removing the barriers that sometime allow outsiders to view Northwest Arkansas as hard to get to. Just think back to how people in other parts of Arkansas used to view this region as distant and hard to get to. With Interstate 49’s connection to Interstate 40, getting here is a breeze compared to the old U.S. 71 and its mountainous curves.

Advocates for highways in Arkansas would like nothing better than to show Missouri the money. Once upon a time, in 2005, Missouri designated money to make the connection but Arkansas wasn’t ready with its funding. By 2010, Missouri decided to shift its funding to stretches of the highway between Joplin and Kansas City.

Now, though, officials at the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission hope to be part of a solution. Based in Springdale, the commission is the designating planning agency for the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers Metropolitan Statistical Area. What some folks don’t realize is that planning area includes McDonald County in Missouri.

That’s why the commission hopes to obtain a federal grant to finish the Bella Vista bypass. If it receives the grant, the commission will give the money to Missouri, an odd transaction to say the least. States aren’t usually keen on handing over money to another state, even a neighboring one.

But Interstate 49 is a little like the water feuds of the Old West. It does little good to have a river through your property if someone stops the flow before it gets there. Northwest Arkansas can expand its highway system all it wants but it’s not going to get the economic benefits until the highways that feed into it are upgraded.

Credit the folks at the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission for dogging this issue and trying to find the funding necessary to connect Arkansas’ I-49 to Missouri’s. Perhaps the funding is a long shot — Missouri needs more than $32 million — but they sometimes pay off.

And it’s good to know the commission isn’t robbing from other projects for the money to send to Missouri. Planning officials say key expansions along Arkansas’ portion of Interstate 49 — such as interchange improvements at Fayetteville’s Wedington and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard exits — are approved for funding and slated to go out to bid in December and in 2021, respectively.

As it was with today’s completed (as if a highway is ever really completed) sections of Interstate 49, it’s hard to fully imagine the convenience and commerce that will be possible once the northern connections are made in Missouri. We hope the work highway and planning officials are putting into this means the connection in Missouri won’t be bypassed again.