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Do you think the LR metro will ever hit 1 million?

bigboyz05

By bigboyz05
in Little Rock Metropolitan Area

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Aporkalypse City

Aporkalypse

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They are only downgrading central ave to 3 lanes for a few blocks downtown...and that is just a trial thing to create a plaza type area. You were talking about cantrell and markham needing to be widened, but no right of ways...well Hwy. 5 in Bryant and Kanis Road are the same way, they are building so close to the road and they will be no room to upgrade the roads.

I think it's OK to narrow Central downtown, it's a crawl due to tourists there anyway and theres' little through traffic down there. Central's congestion is really a problem as you head towards Oaklawn all the way out to the Lake.

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bigboyz05 Burg

bigboyz05

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The area will most certainly hit a million, and probably a lot sooner than most people think. Little Rock's growth has been pretty slow for a while, but steady. That is changing...like pork said, a lot of people are discovering that Little Rock is a nice place to live. The city has an urban base and it's beginning to build on that. The surrounding counties and suburbs are beginning to swell. I think that will be what pushes us up to the million mark. Salt Lake City is smaller than Little Rock, but has over a million in the metro. Atlanta has under 500,000....but the metro is over 4 million. The same thing is going to happen here...the surrounding areas will swell, while Little Rock grows at a more modest pace. Faulkner County has been seeing this growth for sometime. Lonoke County / Cabot are booming....and now Saline County is beginning to explode.

Amazing things are happening in Saline County. Bryant is growing faster than it can handle. Benton is a city that just a few years ago was shrinking, but they've even had a turn-around. Benton is going to be the next boomtown in Central Arkansas...and it's already starting. All of the metroplan people say that the new 6 lane interstate down through Saline County is going to cause that area to explode. It's good to see that Central Arkansas is well on it's way to becoming a real metro.

Do you think the area between Jacksonville and Beebe will have a similar boom?

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tim2462 Hamlet

tim2462

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Do you think the area between Jacksonville and Beebe will have a similar boom?

It already is...Cabot is booming. The area around it is sure to follow. That stretch of freeway is going to be upgraded to 6 lanes as well, they are in the beginning stages in NLR.

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tim2462 Hamlet

tim2462

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^Has the stretch between Benton and Little Rock been widened to 6 lanes yet.

I know that project has been going on for a while, but I'm not sure if it's completed yet or not.

Oh yes, it's been finished since end of Sept. They are about halfway done with the widening of I-40 to 8 lanes through North Little Rock, and are in the beginning stages of widening 67/167 to 6 lanes from NLR up to Jacksonville. All of the frontage roads have been changed to one way and bridges have been added.

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tim2462 Hamlet

tim2462

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Wow, I-40 to 8 lanes in North Little Rock.

Any other Interstates that are 8 lanes in the LR Metro.

That will be the first 8 lane freeway here. It will be 8 lanes for app. 10 miles.

When they ever decide to widen I-40 to Conway, then it will be 6 lanes from where the 8 lanes start, all the way to Conway. They widened all of the bridges 6 years ago to accommodate 6 lanes in that area, but have yet to do anything else. I-630 will eventually be widened to atleast 8 lanes, but no plans of that as of yet.

They are, however in the planning stages of rebuilding the 630 cloverleaf area, they are going to try to fix the traffic jam where 630, 430, shackleford and financial center/chenal all meet.

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tim2462 Hamlet

tim2462

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So pretty much all interstates in the LR area are 6 lanes.

Yes, even the new part of 440 from NLR to Jacksonville is 6 lanes.

They are working on expanding the 67/167 freeway up towards cabot to 6 lanes...

and other than that, the stretch of 40 from 430 to Conway will be the last 4 lane stretch that's

waiting to be widened.

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Aporkalypse City

Aporkalypse

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It already is...Cabot is booming. The area around it is sure to follow. That stretch of freeway is going to be upgraded to 6 lanes as well, they are in the beginning stages in NLR.

I agree, the whole area from Cabot out to Searcy will thrive in the future with Cabot becoming a significant town with restaurants and retail of its own, something that's lacking now. Beebe and Searcy are too far out to really be major commuter towns now but you have to figure at some point that will change.

In addition to 6-laning 67/167, where frankly traffic is as bad as any highway in the state, the new segment of the "North Belt Freeway" connecting Jacksonville to I-440 gives you a way to bypass downtown and miss most of the traffic. Getting from 67/167 ontl 40 briefly and then onto 30 at its inception as it carries NLR traffic into downtown LR is really a busy, congested series of interchanges. After the aforementioned widenings I would really like to see redesign of that interchange and of the always congested I-430/630 interchange in West LR. That one really needs to be redone such that Financial Center Pkwy/630 traffic doesn't stop and back up (it probably should go above or below I-430 and Shackleford.

The highways that really need to be 8-laned are I-630 and I-30 from NLR past downtown LR. I-630 will be redone at some point but it will be a major undertaking as the whole freeway will have to be dug up and widened as it can't accomodate more lanes in its current configuration. I-30 presents a unique problem because traffic counts there are terrible but the Arkansas River Bridge can only handle 6 lanes, meaning to widen it an expensive new bridge would have to be built and land through downtown NLR to build it just isn't there. Widening to 8 lanes on all but the bridge would create a dangerous bottleneck.

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Mith242 Gigalopolis

Mith242

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Until Tim said something I just assumed that they were widening that area of I-40 to just 6 lanes also. They've been working on it for a while already, any ideas of a timeframe for when it's supposed to be completed? I hate those narrow lanes. I always end up next to a big semi of course.

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arkansas_buff Whistle-Stop

arkansas_buff

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Until Tim said something I just assumed that they were widening that area of I-40 to just 6 lanes also. They've been working on it for a while already, any ideas of a timeframe for when it's supposed to be completed? I hate those narrow lanes. I always end up next to a big semi of course.

Mith... I think 40 IS only being widened to 6 lanes. I'll double check on the AHTD website to make sure though.

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tim2462 Hamlet

tim2462

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^That's right... 40 will be 6 lanes. It's scheduled to be completed next year.

They have widened it to 8 lanes...maybe they are only going to use 6 for now...not sure...but they have two new lanes in the middle, and are redoing the outer two lanes on each side...so it's being done to accomodate 8.

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GSCullum Unincorporated Area

GSCullum

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I-40 will be six lanes. The extra space is for shoulders on the sides. I looked around last weekend and it looks like the only part that still needs work is the stretch from Levy east to I-30, particularly the overpass. I've read that it should be done next summer.

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skirby Town

skirby

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I-40 will be six lanes. The extra space is for shoulders on the sides. I looked around last weekend and it looks like the only part that still needs work is the stretch from Levy east to I-30, particularly the overpass. I've read that it should be done next summer.

It reconstruction should have been done by now. They are late because they built one of the bridges wrong and had to rebuild it.

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Mith242 Gigalopolis

Mith242

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Cental Arkansas still experiencing a housing boom

Here's the story and video...although the video doesn't seem to be working at this moment.

http://www.kthv.com/news/news.aspx?storyid=22328

I wonder how housing is outside central and northwest Arkansas markets. Well that and Pine Bluff, I already know how it's doing too.

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