Streets revisited by planners

Streets, current and future, have been the topic of two meetings for Planning Commission members recently.

At the regular meeting Tuesday, Nov. 1, planners continued the evaluation of the long-range street plan which had been reviewed at a tech review meeting Thursday, Oct. 6.

Two state highways run through town - Arkansas Highway 72 and Hwy. 94 - along Curtis Avenue, Slack Street and both East and West Pickens Road.

Planner M.J. Hensley, an engineer, recommended taking those off the city’s plan because they can not govern those roads.

“I’ve never seen a highway department that will meet a city’s ordinance,” Hensley said. “We need to make that a separate item because that’s something over which we have no control.”

Hensley told fellow planners he and Mayor Jackie Crabtree had met with members of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission recently and were working on preparing traffic counts for the city. He noted that traffic had increased in some places, while decreasing in others.

All planners agreed that the current long-range plan had been developed while the city was still in a record-breaking growth mode and that it needed to be revised.

“This thing is mapped out probably 200 years from now,” agreed Dr. Karen Sherman, chairman, adding that planners needed to look at the streets within the city more than considering what was in the outlying areas.

Hensley said that Pea Ridge is not built on a major highway crossroads and is basically off the beaten path. He said that predicts slower growth than in the past.

“The interstate alone isn’t going to help us that much; they could make it eight lanes, but when you get off the road, you don’t have anywhere to go,” he said. “We’re out here kind of isolated.”

Several considerations, such as whether Wal-Mart builds on thepiece of property on Slack Street that it purchased, will affect traffic flow patterns, Hensley said.

Planner Jerry Burton, who was on the original committee that designed the long-range plan, said: “You’ve got to realize, we were expecting an additional 1,000 houses... we still need to plan ahead.”

“We were trying to plan for growth in the next five, 10, 20 years,” Sherman said. “What’s got to be worked on is what’s in our expanding infrastructure inside and immediately outside, not at the state line.”

As planners debated which roads to build to what standards, Hensley said: “I did take highway engineering.”

“I didn’t take it, but tried to use good old common sense. I’m not as smart a man as you are, but you voted on it ... back then, it was a good plan,” Burton said.

It was agreed to take some streets off the long-range plan, decrease the size of others fromcollectors to locals. Planners also agreed on a smaller designation, a minor arterial, with lessright of way required than for an arterial. The size designations were to provide a guidelinesfor developers putting in new streets as well as for current maintenance and improvement.