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I-30 Construction Progress Thread

Started by TheArkansasRoadgeek, December 28, 2017, 03:29:03 AM

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Quote from: Road Hog on February 11, 2022, 03:45:38 AM
If that stretch of interstate was a coronary artery, the nation would be suffering extreme angina if not the big one.

Speaking of arteries
Interstates clinched: 4, 57, 275 (IN-KY-OH), 465 (IN), 640 (TN), 985
State Interstates clinched: I-26 (TN), I-75 (GA), I-75 (KY), I-75 (TN), I-81 (WV), I-95 (NH)



MikieTimT


US71

Like Alice I Try To Believe Three Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Plutonic Panda

Bridge change over begins soon:

QuoteLITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The Little Rock corridor highway project is about to go through some changes.

The Arkansas Department of Transportation has announced the change-over from the old to the new Arkansas River Interstate 30 bridge will take place in three phases beginning Sept. 1.

Once the final phase is accomplished, crews will demolish and replace the old river bridge.

Read more here: https://www.kark.com/news/local-news/ardot-announces-plan-timeline-for-little-rock-i-30-bridge-project-change-over/

Plutonic Panda


bwana39

Quote from: Plutonic Panda on February 21, 2023, 03:56:23 PM
Grant awarded for the park cap:

https://www.kark.com/news/local-news/us-dept-of-transportation-awards-little-rock-2m-grant-for-deck-park-over-i-30/

They had to get a grant just to plan it. Do you honestly think they will put the money together to actually build it. They cannot get that done in DFW.
Let's build what we need as economically as possible.

Plutonic Panda

Quote from: bwana39 on February 21, 2023, 03:59:14 PM
Quote from: Plutonic Panda on February 21, 2023, 03:56:23 PM
Grant awarded for the park cap:

https://www.kark.com/news/local-news/us-dept-of-transportation-awards-little-rock-2m-grant-for-deck-park-over-i-30/

They had to get a grant just to plan it. Do you honestly think they will put the money together to actually build it. They cannot get that done in DFW.
Every other country seems to have it figured out. I'm sure we can here too. I'm sure the one Dallas will be built. I prefer to be optimistic and push to get these things done and not stick to the status quo of everything always being to expensive to build in the USA.

MikieTimT

Quote from: bwana39 on February 21, 2023, 03:59:14 PM
Quote from: Plutonic Panda on February 21, 2023, 03:56:23 PM
Grant awarded for the park cap:

https://www.kark.com/news/local-news/us-dept-of-transportation-awards-little-rock-2m-grant-for-deck-park-over-i-30/

They had to get a grant just to plan it. Do you honestly think they will put the money together to actually build it. They cannot get that done in DFW.

Article says that USDOT will award annual construction grants for the next 4 years, so it sounds like funding has been lined out.  In Arkansas, whatever Little Rocks wants, Little Rock gets.  NWA will make due with 1 Interstate and NEA will make due with 0.75 Interstate, but Little Rock will get 3 Interstates widened and a cover park before anything changes elsewhere.

bwana39

About 1 in 5 people in Arkansas live in metro Little Rock. admittedly that is close to the same in NWA. I agree that Arkansas has always shown favor to Little Rock.  It used to be that over 10% of all Arkansans lived in metro Little Rock.
Let's build what we need as economically as possible.

Road Hog

#60
Metro Little Rock has expanded over the years to include some real stretches like Dallas and Lincoln Counties in its CSA, as well as mountainous Perry County, pop. barely 10,000. Its total CSA population is getting close to a million, if it hasn't gotten there already. That's quite a bit more than 1 in 5 or 1 in 10. More like 1 in 3.
I can't explain the Census Bureau methodology but I can tell you that Little Rock is definitely the hub of the state still.

Little Rock remains the legacy big city in the state and its TV print and radio media still have an outsize influence on the rest of the state, as it has had for years. Little Rock proper suffers from a little St. Louis syndrome in that it's landlocked by suburbs, with nowhere else to grow but west into the mountains west of I-430. That kills the main city population. But west is where the high dollar development is headed. And all the new private schools too.

Having said that, NWA is on the rise as well. I've given my opinion on NWA before and I'm rooting for it.

Tomahawkin

Ever since the early 2000s hasn't the population expansion in NWA outnumbered The Little Rock area 4 to 1? With all the major corporations in NWA it would seem as if that area is the bellow of economic boom and expansion in the state? IMO downtown Little Rock looks the same as it did 35 years ago with the only development happening on the west ends of the IH 430 and 30 corridor?

MikieTimT

Quote from: Tomahawkin on February 26, 2023, 11:16:12 AM
Ever since the early 2000s hasn't the population expansion in NWA outnumbered The Little Rock area 4 to 1? With all the major corporations in NWA it would seem as if that area is the bellow of economic boom and expansion in the state? IMO downtown Little Rock looks the same as it did 35 years ago with the only development happening on the west ends of the IH 430 and 30 corridor?

Pretty much.  Little Rock is the slowest growing metro in the state other than Texarkana, and not due to lack of road capacity as it's pretty well represented for a metro its size.  I lump W. Memphis in with Memphis, TN.  Even Fort Smith, which is pretty much almost been stagnant for the better part of my lifetime, has a faster growth rate than the LR metro.  Crime is the reason that most everyone with a choice either moves in to the west side of LR, or one of the suburbs.

Rothman

Huh.  I would have thought Texarkana would have been growing faster.
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position(s) of NYSDOT.

JREwing78

Quote from: Rothman on February 27, 2023, 08:45:22 PM
Huh.  I would have thought Texarkana would have been growing faster.

Reminds me of a classic line from Smokey & the Bandit:

Cletus: "Big town, ain't it?"
Bandit: "Wonder what they do around here for excitement?"
Cletus: "They probably sit around, watch the cars rust!"

US71

Quote from: Rothman on February 27, 2023, 08:45:22 PM
Huh.  I would have thought Texarkana would have been growing faster.

Maybe if it was one town (it's two, technically).
Like Alice I Try To Believe Three Impossible Things Before Breakfast

bwana39

#66
Quote from: US71 on April 03, 2023, 08:36:59 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 27, 2023, 08:45:22 PM
Huh.  I would have thought Texarkana would have been growing faster.

Maybe if it was one town (it's two, technically).

Technically two who don't get along. Texarkana Texas also has 3 (technically 4) contiguous suburbs. Nash, Wake Village, and Red Lick. With the last TT round of annexations, Leary is also now contiguous. While  Texarkana Arkansas is in a single school district , Texarkana Texas is partially in The Texarkana Texas ISD, Liberty-Eylau ISD, Pleasant Grove ISD, Red Lick ISD, Both Redwater ISD and Leary ISD miss by a few hundred yards.

Texarkana is poor. Texarkana Ar shows a roughly 60% white majority, but the school system is 55% black. Texarkana Texas is majority minority and beyond that is HIGHLY economically segregated. TTISD is 70% minority. Liberty Eylau is 70% minority, Pleasant Grove and Red Lick have significant white majorities.

You have heard me drone on about commercial real estate. A handful of people own most of the undeveloped land in Texarkana and Bowie county. Property sales values before the past 5 years or so were higher in Bowie County than in Hunt County (50 miles from Dallas). As a whole, these people hoard the land and really bank it for the future. There is lots of land that has either lain fallow or has been leased for grazing for decades. Housing development is on some of if not the worst properties in the area. Find a sloppy slough, clean it up, build a lake (big pond) and put houses in. Sometimes with really good roads, often with little better than a rocked path. The one positive is the lots are probably twice the size of normal subdivisions elsewhere. As to why property values in Hunt County have passed Bowie county is the quality of property available AND the fact the sprawl of DFW is starting to reach out. Existing home prices in Texarkana and Bowie County still outstrip the Greenville area when neighborhood types and age are considered.

Texarkana is an expensive place to live and do business. There are minimal opportunities for our kids when they grow up. Texarkana is a small town. There are better small towns. It feels similar to the city but lacks much more than a precursory selection of city type enticements. There is almost as much to do in Marshall or Greenville which are half the size and are less than 50 miles from a bigger town that does have things to do. 

I will add one other thing. Virtually no one born in the 1960's stayed here. I am not sure what that is about. 

I will add one thing. Socioeconomics are a bigger reason for the demographics than the anything else. The the poorer people tend to stay put while the more affluent move toward perceived greener pastures.

Let's build what we need as economically as possible.

Bobby5280

#67
Texarkana sounds a little bit like Lawton. Our real estate situation is pretty screwy. Housing costs are pretty high in relation to local wage scales. The "balance" is not sustainable.

For starters, Fort Sill as well as its East and West ranges takes up a lot of area. Then the KCA tribes have a great deal of trust land. Much of that land sits unused and wild. Cache Creek divides the East and West sides of town; quite a bit of land near it is in the flood plane. The Medicine Park area North of Fort Sill has seen its real estate market get absurd due to out-of-town people "discovering" the place. The Elgin and Cache areas are very costly due to demand; people who can afford to move there do so to be in those better funded school districts. Much of the remaining real estate that can be developed is owned by a small number of people.

We have soldiers reporting to Fort Sill who have a hard time finding any available housing in the immediate Lawton area to rent or buy. Some are having to commute from as far away as Duncan. A lot of kids who grow up in the Lawton area usually leave town after college or trade school. Opportunity is kind of limited here. We're already short on teachers and health care professionals. All this culture war crap going on lately makes Oklahoma an even less desireable place to teach or practice medicine.

Japan is dealing with all sorts of consequences, thanks to decades of high living costs. Their population has been shrinking due to very low birth rates. Now the country is dealing with a new kind of real estate crisis: abandoned homes, mostly in rural areas but the issue is spreading. They coined a term for these abandoned homes, "Akiya." Elderly people pass away and often have no living heirs to take the property. And then if there are surviving relatives they often don't want the property. It usually carries a substantial tax bill. It costs too much to fix up the homes in order to list them; and there's hardly any buyers. The government is bulldozing a lot of these old, abandoned homes. By the 2030's as much as one third of Japan's residential real estate could be vacant.

This same crap might happen here in the US. Here in Lawton the only new homes getting built are these giant-sized, high priced "McMansions" on the far East and West sides of town. Every one of the home buyers assumes they'll be able to sell those homes 20 or 30 years from now for a nice profit. These people don't have a clue where American demographics are headed. We're in the early stages of a baby bust and it could be just as bad as it is in Japan or South Korea. A child-less, single adult isn't going to need a 3,000 square foot house that includes giant sized bills for utilities, maintenance and property tax. Lots of American adults in the future are going to be living smaller. It's very possible bulldozers could be demolishing a bunch of these "rich" neighborhood developments in the not too distant future.

Stephane Dumas

Quote from: Bobby5280 on April 22, 2023, 12:30:49 PM
This same crap might happen here in the US. Here in Lawton the only new homes getting built are these giant-sized, high priced "McMansions" on the far East and West sides of town. Every one of the home buyers assumes they'll be able to sell those homes 20 or 30 years from now for a nice profit. These people don't have a clue where American demographics are headed. We're in the early stages of a baby bust and it could be just as bad as it is in Japan or South Korea. A child-less, single adult isn't going to need a 3,000 square foot house that includes giant sized bills for utilities, maintenance and property tax. Lots of American adults in the future are going to be living smaller. It's very possible bulldozers could be demolishing a bunch of these "rich" neighborhood developments in the not too distant future.

This probably to avoid the same fate as the other "millionaire's row" of the past in various American cities. https://www.youtube.com/@ThisHouse/search?query=millionaire%20row

Bobby5280

Millionaires' Row along the edge of Central Park was an escalation of progress, newer and taller buildings replacing the old ones. Today we have Billionaires' Row in roughly the same place. The situation there is a little more absurd. Many of the properties in that location are not bought as actual living spaces, but rather physical investment assets. There is a bunch of property in Manhattan just sitting empty for no other purpose than functioning as an asset class.

Manhattan has key advantages over a typical suburban upper-middle-class housing development -namely location, location and location. If the United States does experience a sustained baby bust and shrinking population the Manhattan real estate market will probably still weather the consequences with little trouble. But in places like my town those big "McMansion" houses may end up abandoned to slowly deteriorate into ruin, unless a bulldozer comes in to clear the space.

Plutonic Panda


Tomahawkin

Any word on a completion date on the IH 30 widening SW of Little Rock? IMO it needs to be a minimum of 6 lanes total all the way to the Hot Springs connector interchange...

MikieTimT

Quote from: Tomahawkin on June 21, 2023, 03:35:09 PM
Any word on a completion date on the IH 30 widening SW of Little Rock? IMO it needs to be a minimum of 6 lanes total all the way to the Hot Springs connector interchange...

Most recent status update has it completed 6 lanes down to US-70 Late 2024.
https://connectingarkansasprogram.com/corridors/i-30-saline-county/

Road Hog

Quote from: MikieTimT on June 21, 2023, 05:12:47 PM
Quote from: Tomahawkin on June 21, 2023, 03:35:09 PM
Any word on a completion date on the IH 30 widening SW of Little Rock? IMO it needs to be a minimum of 6 lanes total all the way to the Hot Springs connector interchange...

Most recent status update has it completed 6 lanes down to US-70 Late 2024.
https://connectingarkansasprogram.com/corridors/i-30-saline-county/
Compared to the north part of the 67-167 project, this project has been crawling.

Urban Prairie Schooner

Quote from: Road Hog on February 25, 2023, 12:55:43 AM
Little Rock proper suffers from a little St. Louis syndrome in that it's landlocked by suburbs, with nowhere else to grow but west into the mountains west of I-430. That kills the main city population. But west is where the high dollar development is headed.

Any reason why the city cannot expand toward the south along I-530? I can understand why the bottomlands along the river would not see development, but the area to the west of that looks reasonably developable from first glance.



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