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Expressway included in new county road plan |
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Tuesday, 28 October 2008 |
A new Saline County Master Road Plan targets road improvements and includes plans for the proposed Rock Island Expressway.
Plans for the new roadway gave the county “a great opportunity” to revise the road plan because there were things that needed to be added and revised anyway, County Judge Lanny Fite said.
The Quorum Court approved the Master Road Plan during its regular meeting last Tuesday night.
The plan outlines required elements for different types of roads.
Lynn Hart, planning board coordinator, said the reason for the master plan is to ensure the county keeps good roads. “A major reason is that in case of an emergency, emergency vehicles like fire trucks have enough room to get through,” he said.
Fite said, “We want to make sure any road we take into the county will last like a properly built road should. In the past, the county has accepted roads that are inferior and not up to standards of a properly built road. Sometimes, even within months, the county had to spend a lot of money to repair them.”
Hart said the planning board requires developers who build roads, even after they’re built to the specifications, to put up a bond for a year. The amount of the bond is determined by the footage of the road.
Hart added that as traffic picks up on county roads because of growth, it’s important to maintain and classify the roads.
A change to the plan is outlining the requirements for culverts.
“A lot of old subdivisions have metal culverts, and a lot of these subdivisions only have one way in and one way out,” Fite said. Repair work on metal culverts takes longer than work done on plastic and concrete culverts, he said. In the new rules, if the subdivision only offers one way in and one way out, culverts must be concrete. It can be plastic if there is more than one entry into the subdivision.
Another change is widening the right-of-way so, as the county grows, county government doesn’t have to obtain right-of-way through negotiations that take time and money and that could possibly end up in court, Hart said.
Always included in the plan but worth noting, Hart said, is that with any onsite testing, the county’s code enforcement officer is required to be present at the time of the test. “We want to make sure that testing from the start of building a county road to the conclusion has to be done with our code officer,” he said. “He does his own testing, too.”
The last time the plan was revised was in 2004.
Regarding the Rock Island Expressway, the master plan states the expressway’s purpose and plan.
The expressway is to be constructed along the defunct Rock Island Railroad right-of-way from Arkansas 183 near Bauxite to Baseline Road where Saline and Pulaski counties meet. The master plan describes it as a controlled-access, Class II Parkway.
The purpose of the parkway is to provide a more direct connection from south central Saline County to Pulaski County.
In addition to providing motorists with more options, the expressway would provide a designated 7.5-mile biking, walking and jogging trail, something Saline County does not provide at this time.
Surveying the land along the old railroad has been under way for several months now, and Fite said he expects the county to begin purchasing properties in January.
“If there are property disputes with landowners, we’ll escrow the money and let it go to court,” he said.
A copy of the full Saline County Master Road Plan is on file in Room 112 at the courthouse in Downtown Benton.
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