Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
City seeking federal funds for 5 projects
Fayetteville eyeing money for transportation work
FAYETTEVILLE — The city is seeking federal money to help pay for some long-planned transportation projects and to take on a few new ones.
The five projects total more than $4 million. The money comes from the federal government, is administered through the Arkansas Department of Transportation and awarded by the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission on a reimbursement basis.
The commission will award about $15 million in grants to cities in Northwest Arkansas this year. The cities are scheduled to be notified of the amounts awarded in May.
Three federal grant programs could provide money to the city — the Transportation Alternatives Program, Surface Transportation Block Grant Program and Carbon Reduction Program. The federal money would cover 80% of the total cost of the request, with the city covering the remaining 20%. The city’s portion will come from a transportation bond issue voters approved in 2019.
Metropolitan areas with populations exceeding 200,000 people, such as the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metro, are eligible to receive a number of federal grants for transportation projects, said Tim Conklin, executive director of the regional planning commission.
Since 2013, the commission has overseen a call for projects in which cities can fill out applications to receive federal money for transportation projects. A committee within the commission evaluates the applications and ranks them based on whether a project would improve regional mobility, he said.
The scores are given to the commission’s Technical Advisory Committee, which forwards them to the Policy Committee, consisting of mayors and county judges, for final consideration.
It’s a competitive selection process, Conklin said. There are more requests than dollars to go around, but regional leaders typically work together to leverage money in the most impactful way possible, he said.
“I think one of the positive outcomes of this whole process is the community is working together to improve our transportation systems and our active transportation networks,” Conklin said. “Sometimes — actually, not sometimes, many times — communities will reduce their funding requests based on project readiness and whether a community needs the money.”
The City Council is expected to take up the recommendation to apply for the grants in March.
Two of the five projects for which Fayetteville is seeking federal aid have been on the city’s to-do list for a few years.
“We looked at the unfunded list in the bond program and said, ‘Which ones really fit these grant criteria?’” said Chris Brown, the city’s public works director.
The largest is overhauling the intersection at College Avenue and Millsap Road. The city has already received $1.6 million in federal aid for the project and is seeking an additional $1.9 million, Brown said.
If awarded, that would bring the total federal aid to $3.5 million, with a total city contribution of $880,000 for the $4.4 million project, he said.
The plan for the project is to widen lanes at the intersection, reconfigure the signal timing and build a connection from Millsap Road to Sain Street, which is being named Hemlock Avenue.
The idea is to have more “green time” on College Avenue and move east-west traffic on Millsap Road more efficiently, Brown said. Design is mostly finished, and construction should start at the end of the year, he said.
The other project is putting bicycle lanes and a trail on Drake Street connecting to Gordon Long Park. The city is requesting $500,000 in aid and would pay $125,000. The project is still in the preliminary design phase, with no total cost estimate available.
Three other projects are new ones.
A requested $650,000 in aid would help pay for a redesign of the northbound ramp to Interstate 49 from Stephen Carr Memorial Boulevard. The interchange gets stacked up with cars at times, Brown said. The city’s portion would be $162,500.
The last two projects each would receive $500,000 in federal aid, with the city’s portion being $125,000 for each.
Neighborhoods near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, east of School Avenue, would get sidewalks and street lights. The city received a number of comments from neighbors asking for better walkability when developing a mobility plan a few years ago, Brown said.
Street lights also would go up along Rupple Road between Persimmon Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. A few spots have lights as development has happened, but long stretches are dark, particularly near the roundabouts at intersections, Brown said.
Two Fayetteville Public Schools sit on Rupple Road — Owl Creek Elementary School and John L Colbert Middle School. Alan Wilbourn, the School District’s spokesman, said the schools would appreciate new lights.
“The parking lots at both schools are lit, but the street lights will be nice for winter morning and late afternoon traffic and for evening events at the schools,” he said.