I-30 has been under “construction” for over ten years.
It started almost two decades ago with a plan to widen the Interstate in a rapidly growing segment on the road from Little Rock to Dallas.
The current governor’s Daddy was governor at the time and he appointed a bunch of buddy’s and donors to the Highway Commission.
ARDOT had a good business plan.
Build roads that only last for four years or one ice storm, and then get Federal dollars to rebuild them.
The revenue model worked.
Arkansas has the distinction of being in the middle.
A lot of trucks drive through the state going someplace else.
I-40 coast to coast.
I-30 from here through Dallas and on to I-20.
And our governor figured out that Federal tax dollars would keep flowing in to make those roads.
Not better roads.
Just roads.
It took almost eight years to finish I-30 the first time.
And one flood to take it out.
Because all that building and population growth along the corridor also had a side effect.
Real Estate Developers clear cut the trees, which let the frequent storms wash right down the ridges and hills into swollen creeks.
Which washed out a section of the Interstate that required more rebuilding and repair.
More money from Uncle Sam to fix the problem.
Excuse me, we call that a revenue stream here.
Floods. Ice. And Ineptitude.
Because as soon as they laid the last white stripe on the pavement on the other side of the Hot Springs exit, we had to start over again.
A traffic study showed we needed four lanes on each side instead of two.
That’s been happening for almost a decade.
We call it progress.
And learned that if it worked on one roadway, it should work on all of them.
Who says Arkansas can’t innovate?
We trained our government how to apply for and get dollars from other states so we can build and maintain Interstates.
Not well, mind you.
Riding on them is the equivalent to sitting on a washing machine.
It might be fun, if that’s your kink, but not so great if it ain’t.
Plus, the contractors we bring in from out of state to do the job don’t do so good of a job.
I think it’s tough to lay road.
Traffic whizzing by at death providing speeds.
Hot in the summer, cold in the winter. Weather delays and budget delays and material delays.
But one thing we do well in all states I’ve lived in, is make bad roads.
It’s as if we are experts at it.
Which makes me think that while we ponder innovation and advances in computers and our thoughts and our culture and other areas, where are we on making roads that last?
For all of our advances in communications and transportation, if they can be called that, we haven’t built roads that will last longer than a decade.
My Papaw put in a gravel road on his land in LA.
Lower Arkansas.
It ran a quarter of a mile, was hard packed dirt and gravel.
Every year, he ran a grater on it to scrape and flatten out the potholes.
Sometimes, he bribed county workers with cold Dr. Pepper’s to drop a half load or remnants of gravel or rock at the entrance so he could spread it.
There were ditches on either side he scraped clear each spring with an attachment on his tractor that looked like an auger.
We never had a flooded road, although the section to my uncles house felt a little like a washboard from his desire to see how fast he could race his short bed Chevy from the black top to his driveway.
After Papaw died, they sold off most of his land, and turned the maintenance of the road over to the city.
They installed a two lane blacktop on top of the gravel. The ditches clogged up. The road flooded in heavy rains.
The blacktop washed out in sections and needed patching.
There’s a huge difference between a ¼ mile section of back road in the pine studded woods, and the 211 miles of two and four lane Interstate bisecting the state.
I’m just not sure what it is yet.
Maybe I’ll just stick to backroads until I do.
I’ve read a few Willow Rose novels and picked up this trilogy for the weekend. It’s free today if you want to add it to your list.
Emma Frost Mystery Series: Book 1-3
This one looked interesting too: Innocence Taken
Cosmic Carnies – a sci fi adventure
You might like this: Kaida — Nano Samurai — a story
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Bad roads? We live in rural Queensland, Australia and we love it. However, the road crews don't do a very good job but we are guessing that the money provided isn't enough to create something better and more durable. To make it worse, where there is bitumen it is often so narrow that it isn't wide enough for two vehicles coming from opposite directions to pass each other. Out here each person learns to drive with two wheels on the bitumen and two off it!
I love Arkansas. Since I am from South Louisiana I am very comfortable with poorly maintained roads. Our house when I was a kid was on a major road to the coast of Louisiana. Admittedly we were only 7 miles from Vermilion Bay by air. 20+ miles and a ferry ride by car.
My wife was so in love with the area around Onia that she bought 80 acres of unimproved land. We spent one anniversary night over a campfire there and she had had enough. Somehow my city girl just could not tolerate the bats that swarmed the bugs over the fire. She got into our F-150 and hid from the beasts. I thought the coyote songs were beautiful and we had lots of ammo just in case.
Arkansas is such a beautiful place if you avoid the cities.
A few years ago we sold that land and made a few dollars profit. I still miss the woods up there. I am a city bound country boy.
Ernie