Site Navigation List of All High Priority Corridors Interstate Guide.com HPC Home High Priority Corridors: Excerpts from the ISTEA, NHS, TEA-21, and SAFETEA-LU Legislation Changes to HPC System due to SAFETEA-LU High Priority Corridors: Sources   Interstate 555 (Corridor 39) Routing The official routing of Corridor 39 according to TEA-21 is "United States Route 63 from Marked Tree, Arkansas, to Interstate 55." Per a press release from Arkansas Highway Department dated January 10, 2001, "Interstate 555 will be the official designation for the section of Highway 63 from I-55 at Lake David to U.S. Highway 49 (Southwest Drive) in Jonesboro upon completion of the highway to Interstate design standards." Here's more: As of January 2001, the 26-mile portion of Highway 63 from Payneway to Highway 49 (Southwest Drive) in Jonesboro is already constructed to full Interstate standards with the remaining 18-mile section from Payneway to Lake David scheduled for upgrading in the future. Signs designating the highway as "Future I-555" will be in place until the route is completed to Interstate standards. "Progress is continuing to upgrade the highway to a fully-controlled access facility," explained Dan Flowers, Director of the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department. "This designation of the route as 'Future I-555' is an important step in establishing Interstate status to the corridor," Flowers added. "The Interstate will connect the Jonesboro area and its related economic activity with I-55 and to I-40 in the West Memphis area," Benafield said. Scott Dennis writes that U.S. 63 from just west of Jonesboro southeast to Marked Tree is a limited access freeway. Scott writes, "I have driven most of it; you can look at the cool maps on the Arkansas Highway department's web page to see that the limited access section starts just south of Marked Tree; most commercial maps are wrong about this." However, from Marked Tree southeast to Interstate 55, the road surface is in worse shape and there are numerous at-grade intersections. U.S. 63 was inserted as a high priority corridor to get money for upgrading this segment to a freeway. Funding for this is included in TEA-21 funding for Fiscal Year 1999 as AR027 # 1018. This will provide for a limited access freeway from Memphis to Jonesboro (and eventually, possibly, to Kansas City). Back in April 1999, the application to designate U.S. 63 along this stretch as Interstate 555 was denied by AASHTO. Arkansas DOT submitted a route numbering application for the establishment of Interstate 555 to follow U.S. 63 from Interstate 55 northwest to Jonesboro. The AASHTO Special Committee on Route Numbering and the AASHTO Standing Committee on Highways at their meetings on April 16 and 17, 1999, (respectively) disapproved Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department's application because the Marked Tree to Interstate 55 portion of the proposed route does not meet Interstate standards and will not for sometime. During Fall 2000, the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department resubmitted U.S. 63 between Interstate 55 and Jonesboro for acceptance into the Interstate Highway System, and it was accepted in January 2001. U.S. 63 Southern Extension During 1999 and 2000, the AASHTO route numbering committee also met to consider extending U.S. 63 southwest of its current terminus. U.S. 63 was truncated from its former southern terminus in Memphis, Tennessee, to West Memphis, Arkansas, in 1999. At the same meeting, the committee approved a southwestern U.S. 63 extension from Arkansas into Louisiana, contingent upon Arkansas improving shoulder and pavement widths. The planned routing of the southwestern U.S. 63 extension was announced in a news release dated November 8, 1999. U.S. 63 will run concurrently with Interstate 40 west to State Highway 11 near Hazen. The U.S. 63 designation will then follow State Highway 11 to Stuttgart where it will join U.S. 79 southwestward to near Altheimer. From that point, U.S. 63 will follow existing State Highway 15 to El Dorado where it will join U.S. 167 into Louisiana. This will provide a continuous routing from West Memphis southwest to Ruston, Louisiana, at Junction Interstate 20. I imagine that once the U.S. 63 freeway between Interstate 55 and Jonesboro is completed, the "kink" in U.S. 63 (where the route heads southeast from Jonesboro to West Memphis, then west to Hazen) will be eliminated. In other words, U.S. 63 would probably be decommissioned along its old routing with Interstate 555, and it would be cosigned with U.S. 49 south to meet its southern extension near Interstate 40 Exit 193. If this occurs, this southern extension will make a whole lot more sense than it does right now. Page Updated June 9, 2002.