Kyle Kellams: With three weeks left in 2025, you may already be thinking about your goals for 2026. The Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission is thinking about 2050 and the years between now and then. The just released Forward 2050 Regional Transportation Plan considers safety, efficiency and responsibility regarding transportation the region will need in 2050, when there will be a projected population of more than one million people in Benton and Washington counties.
The draft for the plan comes after more than a year of public input, studies and examinations of other rapidly growing regions. The latest public session was Monday at Jones Center in Springdale.
Tim Conklin, executive director of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission, says the draft is ready for public inspection.
Tim Conklin: So we really want to hear from people in this draft plan. Did we hear from you earlier this year? And then have we captured what you would like to see as a regional vision with shared goals, to actually implement an overall transportation plan over the next 25 years.
Then the other part of it is, you know, we’re really educating the public here in northwest Arkansas about what does it take to actually deliver these type of infrastructure, these facilities, these regional facilities that allow us to live in one community, work in another community. We’re very fortunate to have three Fortune 500 companies up and down the corridor, the University of Arkansas that continues to grow, 34,000 students, faculty and staff. And so we really want to hear from the public about, you know, close your eyes, open them up. It’s 2050. What systems do you want in place?
And then the other part of the equation is how do we fund that? How do we pay for that? What can we learn from other areas across the United States about how they have collaborated together, how they’ve joined together to deliver that infrastructure?
So within our plan, we also have some recommendations with regard to what regional systems could we deploy within the region and how best to do that. And so I would say for this plan, it’s really looking at this inflection point of northwest Arkansas at 600,000 population a day, knowing that we’re going to be a million population. And what have other regions done across the United States to actually plan for a million population?
And so you’ll see within our plan everything from how do we manage I-49 with managed lanes could be HOV high toll lanes, that type of system improving I-49 to high capacity transit on U.S. 71B MLK. And then of course, I think everybody recognizes how wonderful our trail systems have been deployed or implemented over the last 20 years. northwest Arkansas. So what’s next with, you know, really connecting our communities together? And so this is a plan about completing our transportation network, all modes throughout all of our cities in Benton and Washington County. We have 31 cities. We don’t have one big central city that is planning for a regional transportation system. And so we’re just trying to get everybody within the region together to have this really important discussion about what infrastructure looks like in the next 25 years.
Kellams: You mentioned 31 cities. This is a polycentric region. And what are the challenges with that when you don’t have a central hub? You’ve, you know, you’ve got the western side of I-49 that’s growing right now.
Conklin: So it does have many challenges on how to deliver infrastructure. And so once again, as we look at growth, especially growth along the Highway 112 corridor, growth along the Highway 59 corridor, Highway 72, we’re seeing a lot of infrastructure needs being brought to our attention about when are these projects going to be completed? How can we get them moving? How can we begin project development? And so that’s what’s really important about having public input, is to make sure we understand what are the other priorities and some of the smaller cities.
What may be Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers-Bentonville saw 20 or 30 years ago, that same type of growth and development is happening today just outside our big four cities. And so we are really trying to pull all of our planning partners together to have a shared vision and shared goals of how to deliver that infrastructure.
Kellams: I think it’s chapter five of this 98-page study that’s on public display here that talks about paying for it.
Conklin: That’s a very important part of this plan. We went back and looked at all of the past transportation needs in the region. What has been studied, what has been recommended, recommended, what has already been constructed and what’s still planned. And then we updated the cost of all those improvements, all that infrastructure. We came up with about $6 billion of needs for our infrastructure, and we also projected about $3 billion of revenue to actually implement that. So we have a delivery gap in funding of everything we’ve identified that we believe is needed to serve a million population region. And so as a region, as you mentioned in that chapter, we’re talking about how have other fast growing, successful regions handled delivery gaps in delivering infrastructure to serve that population?
Kellams: Twenty-five years from now can sound like a long time, but not so much when you’re talking about infrastructure. So it’s great you have the input at some point. You know, shovels meet dirt.
Conklin: Yeah. And so, you know, we’re still working on completing the 612 bypass, which is not complete. We are still trying to complete Highway 112. When we talk about 25 years and when we talk about infrastructure, most of this infrastructure takes five, ten, fifteen, sometimes 20, 25 years to deliver. That’s why it’s really important today to identify what infrastructure do you want on the ground in place 25 years from now, because you need to start today planning for that and how you’re going to deliver that infrastructure to actually see it in 20, 30, 40 and 50. These infrastructure projects can take decades. That’s why it’s really important, especially the very large infrastructure projects that connect the regions.
Kellams: And finally, you and I have talked a lot about highways and roadways, but this also takes into account buses extending the greenway, making sure they’re safe bike lanes. It’s not just automobile transportation.
Conklin: That is correct. We are looking at a transportation system that covers all modes. This year we developed a Complete Streets design guidelines that’s available to all our communities. When we build our infrastructure, we don’t want to make the same mistakes we have in the past because it’s very expensive to go back and retrofit. And you see a lot of retrofits happening up and down 71B in the corridor and other corridors where it’s not very easy to walk or bike.
And so I think we’ve learned a lot looking back the last 25 years about, yes, we built the Razorback Greenway. We got a 40-mile transportation, outdoor recreation spine within the region. But as soon as you get off the greenway, sometimes it’s not that easy to walk or bike. And so we really need to think about the next 25 years of infrastructure, about how we design that, how we plan for that, making sure that all users and all modes of all ages and abilities can use that infrastructure. So that is also part of this plan, is that we want to make sure that when we are building our communities and the act of city building and making sure we’re giving people transportation choice within the region, that we’re actually delivering infrastructure that provides transportation choices for everybody living here in the region today and for tomorrow.
Tim Conklin is the executive director of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission. We spoke Monday during a public input session regarding the Forward 2050 Regional Transportation Plan. You can see the 98-page draft at their website.
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