The wrong path

City, state at odds over bike path

What’s the cost of asking the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department to make sense?

In Fayetteville, it might be as much as $415,000.

That’s what the state Highway Department has asked the city to contribute to a state project to (hopefully) improve the Wedington Drive interchange in Fayetteville with Interstate 49. That crossing has, for years, represented a clog in the east-west plumbing that is Fayetteville’s transportation system. We’re glad to know the Highway Department is preparing to do something about it.

But as is so often the case, the city and the Highway Department seem to speak different languages when it comes to embracing the human-powered bicycle as a mode of transportation. Here in the 21st century, the state agency focuses most of its resources on moving automobiles from Point A to Point B, and that’s as it should be (until someone finally develops those hover cars we’ve all dreamed of). But just when we think state highway officials are beginning to grasp the value and importance of bicycles to urban transportation, they prove they’re not quite ready to take the training wheels off.

Creation of safe pedestrian and bicycle crossings of Interstate 49 is critical to Fayetteville officials’ efforts to link their city — their entire city — via trails and bike paths. The interstate represents a major barrier, a concrete swath so intimidating for cyclists and pedestrians only the bravest dare cross it.

Which brings us to the Wedington Drive interchange. State plans for its improvement called for a 117-foot-wide bridge with a small sidewalk for pedestrians. The Highway Department designed the bridge with bike paths — an area of the main road sectioned off by painted white lines on the pavement for cyclists. For all intents and purposes, that amounts to cyclists mixing with moving automobiles as they navigate the hectic crossing of Interstate 49.

City leaders urged the state to reconsider. The project could include a shareduse (pedestrian and cyclists) concrete path on one side, separated from the automobile traffic. By reallocating the space, the project could be done within the same width of the overall project, yet the separated crossing for walkers, runners and cyclists would be immensely more safe.

The Highway Department appeared amenable to the idea, and they still are. All Fayetteville’s taxpayers have to do is cough up $415,000.

Why? Because, according to Highway Department Director Scott Bennett, the state’s policy is to include bike paths via pavement markings on the primary road surface. A “shared-use use” path — even though within the same footprint as the original project — “is not considered a mode of transportation but rather a recreational enhancement that increases the quality of life for local residents, as well as attracting tourism that benefits the local economy.”

Let’s get this straight: A UA student wants to ride his bicycle from campus to his apartment at The Links. If he rides his bicycle across a bridge just inches from cars, trucks and 18-wheelers, it is “transportation.” The same cyclist crossing the bridge on a concrete path separated from traffic by several feet is simply “recreational,” even though the route is the same, only safer. And providing this added safety for cyclists should cost a municipality a six-figure amount very nearly reaching half a millions dollars?

This week, the Fayetteville City Council’s Transportation Committee voted to ask staffers to approach Northwest Arkansas’ Highway Commission member, Dick Trammel, to implore him to pursue a more sensible approach. Hopefully, Trammel will listen. Just last month, he defended Highway Department policies when it comes to working with cities.

“We’re very conscious of quality of life, and a lot of that means bicycles, particularly bicycles, and walking,” said Trammel, who is chairman of the five-member Highway Commission. Traffic safety includes all modes of transportation, he said. “We try to take care of the taxpayers’ money as efficiently as possible and keep people safe.”

That’s good news, unless he’s only talking about the taxpayer dollars that go to the Highway Department. Hopefully, he applies the same logic to inefficiencies that cost cities money unnecessarily.

Cities and the Highway Department work together all the time to work out the conflicts inherent when major highways are also serving as city streets. All of them have a shared interested in moving traffic efficiently and safely. The Highway Department’s vision of what “transportation” includes must be revised to fit 21st century expectations in thriving communities such as those here in Northwest Arkansas. Suggesting bicycles amount to just “recreation” when they’re crossing a busy interstate is ludicrous.

The Highway Department needs to help Fayetteville avoid becoming a tale of two cities — west and east. A big part of that will be connectivity of Fayetteville’s trail system over that ever-widening swath of concrete known as Interstate 49.

Labeling the city’s push for safer bicycle crossings as “recreation” and shifting the cost burden isn’t going to get anyone anywhere.