A four-lane U.S. highway running east-west across the southernmost tier of Arkansas counties, and a freight-transfer facility at Pine Bluff. Both were among proposals aired at a meeting seeking ideas for inclusion in a plan to be submitted to Congress.

The Delta Regional Authority convened the session yesterday. It was one of a series of such meetings planned throughout the eight-state Mississippi Delta region. The authority says the meetings will help the regional agency put together a 20-year transportation plan to be submitted to Congress in July.

Toby Stephens, executive director of the Magnolia Economic Development Corporation, urged the authority to seek money to pay for widening of U.S. 82 to four lanes from Greenville, Mississippi, to Texarkana.

He said the highway would cross the proposed route of Interstate 69 and could create a center of economic activity and help ship goods across the state. Jerre George, a senior planner at the Southeast Arkansas Regional Planning Commission in Pine Bluff, offered the proposal
for an intermodal facility near Grider Field, the city's municipal airport. 

The plan, estimated to cost about $10 million, calls for developing the site and widening two roads to provide links with nearby Union Pacific rail lines and with U.S. 65.

     
     
      (Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)

Email To A Friend