It's not the only good argument. As delineated in the wording of the legislation, it wouldn't make sense to use I-50. However, there is much evidence outside of just this legislation that there are plans, for good reason too I might add, to extend eastward from I-49. ISTEA made all of US-412 from Tulsa to Nashville HPC #8, which means that the intent is to upgrade it to 4 lanes throughout.
Lots of those High Priority Corridors drawn up in legislation 20+ years ago are never going to happen, certainly not as full-blown Interstate routes. Lots of federal legislation ends up scuttled.
Arkansas may intend to upgrade US-412 across Northern Arkansas to 4 lanes, but the 4 lanes can be anything from an undivided 4-lane street to something divided with freeway exits. Chances are very minimal US-412 will upgraded to 100% limited access between Springdale (I-49) and Hayti (I-55). Simple undivided 4-lane upgrades will be difficult to build. I would expect people in the town of Henderson, just East of Mountain Home, would raise hell about highway construction through there.
There is a much better chance for US-60 across Southern Missouri from Springfield to Sikeston to get upgraded to full Interstate standards. But they've already been working on that corridor, building spot upgrades here and there, for decades. And it still has a long way to go before being an Interstate-class facility. US-412 across Northern Arkansas is a very long way behind US-60 in Southern Missouri in terms of corridor development.
US-60 may be easier to turn into an interstate between the endpoints you stated above, but it certainly doesn't connect anything major (Springfield is a major metro area with a pretty stagnant population over the last decade, Sikeston not so much and shrinking since the 90's) while staying on a general latitude, while US-412 does, at least across a couple of states. US-60 takes a dive to the southwest halfway across Oklahoma (and drops south of US-412 past its concurrency with it past Enid, OK) until it intersects I-40 at Amarillo, so it doesn't make a case as a transcon any more than US-412 does, so anyone with aspirations of reserving I-50 for US-60 would have trouble finding anything more than the portion across Missouri that even somewhat retains a rough latitude. Missouri also doesn't have a recent history of doing much at all in the way of roadbuilding that didn't involve Arkansas and will update a portion of that very segment for the I-57 project that they'll also share with Arkansas. That being said, an x44 or x57 between Springfield and Poplar Bluff does make some sense as much of the hard work has already been done. I don't really see the push past Springfield westward however, unless there was some sort of economic growth between it and Wichita, jumping off the US-60 and onto US-160/400 lateral.
As far as Henderson, AR goes, it's an tiny unincorporated retirement community with a handful of people, so the stink they raise will be proportional to how loud they are, not due to any political influence the community has. It's not like it couldn't be bypassed to the south anyway fairly easily since Mountain Home's 4 lane divided bypass, itself easily converted to limited access and already has a grade separated exit with AR-5, runs to the south.
US-412 between the Huntsville and Harrison, and also from Harrison to Hardy at least, will have to be built on completely new alignment as funding permits between the city bypassing that has already been planned or undertaken all across northern Arkansas as is typical ARDOT fashion, but the current US-412 facility, unsuitable for the traffic counts it already has, will continue to serve everything in between. The current work to put climb lanes on US-412 is pretty much like they did with US-71 in NWA before it was wholesale replaced with I-49. Buying time until the real plan can get started. Having any portion of US-412 in Arkansas as an Interstate will prod consideration to continue it on.
None of this happens within the next 15 years (other than some potential city bypasses, especially Harrison, which everyone, especially my Asian wife, would like to avoid driving through) given I-49 and I-57's priorities. Also, Little Rock's roads are always a perpetual priority in Arkansas despite its growth being slower than even Springfield's metro area, but US-412's upgrade is going to happen due to growth patterns that barely bother to pause growth during recessions whereas all of southern Missouri, other than the 10% growth in the Springfield metro and also the counties between Joplin and NWA, has stagnated or even shrunk, good times and bad. If you look at the population changes by county for the last 10 years and likely even further back, nearly every single county in Oklahoma and Arkansas along the US-412 corridor, except for the panhandle of Oklahoma, has been growing. That necessitates addressing the transportation bottlenecks the region has.
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Topic: Proposed US 412 Upgrade (Read 53700 times)