ALC - Highway Commission Review and Advisory Subcommittee
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Speaker 2
0:00
if everyone want to take their seats we're about to get started
Speaker 7
0:40
Highway Commission Review and Advisory Subcommittee to order. Chair sees a quorum. I'd like to thank everybody for being here. I know we have some commissioners here also, but we will begin with our reports from Director Wiley. if you'd like to come up and introduce yourself for the record good afternoon mr chairman i'm
Speaker 14
1:10
jared wiley director of the arkansas department of transportation appreciate you guys having me today yeah
Speaker 7
1:16
and also uh there's a summary that the director is going to go through you should have a copy of that on your desk uh and you may want to i don't know how you want to do it if you want to Combine B1 and 2 while you're presenting, that's fine if you want to do that. Before you start, the only other thing, Senator Payton is unable to be with us again today, and so just remember him in your thoughts and prayers.
He's still having some problems with his pain level. So go ahead and proceed, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you. Before I start,
Speaker 14
1:49
I'd like to thank, we have two members of our Highway Commission here with me today, commissioner marie holder from little rock and commissioner jerry halsey jr from jonesborough i appreciate them being here supporting us thank you thank you all for being here and then a lot of my our administrative team from our dots here as well if you ask a question that i can't answer i think these guys can take care of that uh representative you want me to start with b you
ready to go yes okay so uh we're going over first item is the progress of our highway construction projects uh totaling 10 million dollars or more this is a report that we run each quarter and since we last met we've had two quarters pass so i would ask you to refer to the quarter four report there in your in your booklet before we jump into that though i do want to remind you that we do have an online dashboard now that we went live with earlier this year and so all this
information now is out there available anytime on that dashboard on our website but but i'd like to open it up to questions if you
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
3:13
guys have any thank you thank you mr chair director wiley it's good to see you today um just curious on average here
for the third and fourth quarter projects what's the average uh on the amount of projects
that we're on time with and then what we're behind a rough estimate representative we're i
Speaker 14
3:30
don't have that average here for you most of our projects are progressing nicely
Speaker 15
3:35
there are some that are are dragging a little bit we've had some utility issues out there we're working through The MLK connection in Jonesboro is one that comes to mind Arkadelphia bypass we've had a couple of change orders there to add some time but in general
The bulk of our projects are progressing. Well, I think we have 2.6 billion dollars worth of projects under construction right now and for the most part things are moving along well I think reported the Commission today We've paid out about 400 million dollars over the last two months on this work. So a lot of good work going on that's great so would it be safe
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
4:09
to assume probably over 80 percent of the projects that we got are on time or ahead well i hate to i hate to well if you yeah i get that let me
Speaker 14
4:17
look at that if you can give me a percentage for sure i appreciate that thank you so you want you want
by number of projects dollar amount what are you you could
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
4:26
just give me the third and fourth quarter whatever the projects that are on just give me an average of on time or
Speaker 38
4:49
behind we can appreciate it thank you there you go thank
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
4:51
you mr. chairman over here on the corner this may be in the
report I haven't had time to look at it but those projects on Parker Road there in Jonesboro specifically that one on Southwest Drive is that progressing as planned or that that's quite a traffic jam there yes let me let me see if I can find that in the
Speaker 42
5:12
report representative lady man and we'll get you that update just a second my team you know what page that's
Speaker 23
5:30
on the report i don't see it here it's got to be over 10 million
dollars to to be in this report um well i
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
5:37
there's a number of projects along that road i don't they may not each project might not be over 10 million i don't know let me let me look at that and i'll get back with you on that i
Speaker 14
5:47
sure will thank you you bet i know we partner with the city on that project and it's been a long time in the making uh congestion existed when i was in college there but we're working through it now but i'll get you an
Speaker 30
5:58
update well they're doing a lot of work down there and making some progress but it'd be nice if it was done okay yeah absolutely
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
6:24
to see you. Sebastian County on the 71B, Highway 271 and 64, called Townsend Avenue.
the completions 2030 my question is will that entail sidewalks on both sides of the highway so the Towson Avenue project that's uh there's
Speaker 14
6:46
some change coming on that this this report reflect the last quarter our next
Speaker 15
6:51
program is pulling that project out of our next plan we've been in conversation with the city when we programmed that project it was expected to cost 12 to 15 million costs are over 60 million now
20 million dollars of that is right away impacting the city utilities So we're working with the city of Fort Smith on that But we're gonna dial that back because we simply don't have the funds to build it right now But yes, the project did plan to include drainage improvements and sidewalks on
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
7:23
both sides. Okay Pardon me. Do you know how many years? We're talking about pulling it back or will that be Fort Smith that decides? Well, it'll
Speaker 15
7:31
be, we'll work with them on that, but it's going to depend on available funding and just the need there for the project.
And right now that $60 million, we don't feel like that's a good, the best use of that funding today. So we paused it. We're working towards right-of-way acquisition along that corridor. So we're pausing so we don't go too far. But when we do want to restart that, all that groundwork we've done, we'll be able to use. But if we had the money today, I would guess it
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
8:03
would probably be two, two-and-a-half years before we could start turning dirt. Okay. One more question, please. When this gets started, I had called before about some sidewalks in the area.
And it goes on past zero. Are you familiar with the Towson Avenue project? Yes, ma'am. So when it turns from Towson to Zebro, is that part of the project as well? No, the
Speaker 62
8:33
project ends at the terminus there. At the terminus? Yes. Okay. And will
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
8:38
that money stay in a pot for this project or does it go out to other projects? So the funding
Speaker 15
8:46
will be reallocated to other projects in the area and the step. I think that we're looking at potentially looking
at some projects in greenwood the bypass there for that funding so we can utilize it today all right thank you yes
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
9:08
ma'am thank you mr chair director thanks for being here today um i don't want to take up too much your time i see plenty of other folks queued up to go but if uh you could give any type of update or insights on the i-40 highway 59 interchange there in crawford county van buren
be grateful to be able to share that with my
Speaker 15
9:26
constituents absolutely so that work is should be complete very soon that's another partnership with the city of van buren we expect it to be complete this fall and it'll be open and done before the year's out it's very exciting
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
9:39
a lot of people's lives will be changed by the commute there on on that highway so thank you for that You bet. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Reverend DeRuy.
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
9:55
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for letting me in. Jared, I want to tell you how much I appreciate you. The other day, you and I talked a little bit about the floodway in March 3. That gets beat all to pieces with cars coming across that going to Osceola and to Blyville. Yes, sir. And you told me I think something here in the near future where it's going to get that fixed. And one other thing, and this is about children, from Lepanto all the way to Wilson,
that road is tore all to pieces, Jared. And what's happened, the farmer in that area has built the ground up and is leaving a drop-off, and the school buses are flooding out going through there. And it's just in real bad shape, that road is. Okay, let me I'll get our team looking at
Speaker 42
10:42
that and thank you more. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you Representative Carr, thank you, mr. Chair
Representative John P. Carr
Unverified
10:56
Good to see you director Wally. Hey, just gonna get a quick update on kind of where we are on the Kings bridge over with And I know it's early
Speaker 30
11:07
in the planning But just to kind of get an idea of that crop
Speaker 15
11:12
the new bridge there at Memphis. Yes, sir So that's the new Interstate 55 bridge, the replacement project, that current bridge, built in 1949. We received a joint grant with Tennessee DOT of $393 million to help tackle that project.
We meet on that every month. I've got a meeting coming up next month with those guys. We're about 60% design, and so we're refining our cost estimate, as it seems to be typical these days costs are more than we expect and so we had a great productive meeting with the contractor there a couple weeks ago in Memphis we're hoping to see some price decreases soon if everything goes according to plan like we'd like it's it's realistic to believe we could be starting on a bridge in 2027 all right good deal thank you
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
12:01
thank you sir thank you mr. chair thank you perfect follow-up my questions about what's going on over near memphis as well um so um i've i've noticed that um when i'm over in that part of the state interstate 40 as it intersects with interstate 55 is squeezed down into one lane even though i don't know what the numbers are i would argue that interstate 40 probably carries more traffic than 55 but every afternoon where i've driven through there the there seems like
there's a one two mile long backup because we're trying to merge two lanes of traffic down to one to squeeze in on that interchange so my first question is are you aware of that issue and i notice you all have
been doing some work over there is that on the radar to
Speaker 15
12:51
maybe somehow address that yes sir good good question yes we we're aware of that and uh in the renew arkansas highway program the half cent sales tax we allocated some funding in that 20-year program for that so our team is designing a project to correct that to add some capacity there
the work we're doing now is to address that rough concrete pavement we have on i-40 yes and so we're trying to you know i hate to use this term we're trying to put a band-aid on it for a while to buy some time because some of that concrete's coming apart and we think this project that's going on now will help smooth that out for several years to come and then we'll have to address that with a larger scale project one day okay so
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
13:32
sounds like it's on your radar thank you representative
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
13:39
layman thank you mr chairman uh jared you may not be able to answer this and it might not be it might be a city thing versus a state but uh again on that parker uh those access points to 555 that y'all are working on some of those are going to be roundabouts and some are not and my question is uh how do you determine uh roundabouts i mean is that is there a number is it local is it from the input of the meetings you have how do you determine whether there's a
Speaker 30
14:10
roundabout yeah another great question representative i mean
Speaker 15
14:13
it all the above we look at the available space we look at the traffic flow we look at uh how much traffic is coming into each leg what the crash history is there at that intersection and we talk to the public and we try to make the the best judgment call there so that we can address those needs but the fact remains by and large roundabouts are safer and they improve throughput there is a learning curve there people are a little bit hesitant about those until they learn how to navigate them but we work
through the process and try to pick the
Speaker 30
14:47
right puzzle piece to put in the right the right spot each time well i know some people like
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
14:52
them some people don't yes sir there's one over there on airport road that was kind of sketchy when it started but it's been there a while and people use it and it works very well so
Speaker 15
15:03
thank you thank you yes sir and we have a really good fact sheet that we built about roundabouts and i've got a video to show you in a little bit about a program we're working on but we've actually built some videos to help people feel more
Speaker 78
15:15
comfortable navigating those roundabouts so we're trying to educate drivers as well representative rye yes thank
Speaker 66
15:27
you one more time mr chairman jerry you know you and i have talked
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
15:32
a little bit about truman on that third lane that's going to come in and you know we've also talked about the carousel or what do we call it the the roundabout roundabout yes sir and you And you know, that may be a lot cheaper and it may be a lot safer.
But I just wanted to let you know that the Corps of Engineers is fixing to take Big Creek there and Truman and clean that out all the way to two lot. So almost a million dollars worth of work, Jared. And I'm hoping to get that stuff fixed before that third lane comes in. But you'll just have to do what you got to do.
Speaker 42
16:09
Well, that's good to know. sure my team's taking note of that and if that impacts the hydraulic analysis for our highway we'll make sure we take a look at that
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
16:18
sure appreciate you thank you thank you mr wiley
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
16:21
thank you mr chair if your staff can get me an update on where we're at with the uh mountain home bypass and with the amazon facility traffic count what we're doing there if you can just give me an update on that i'd greatly appreciate
Speaker 82
16:41
it thank you we have any other questions on the quarterly
Speaker 7
16:48
reports uh i would i would only like to comment on the main street bridge and harrison
opening that you know that you had last friday i appreciate everybody that was there and i thought that went well and also i understood it's on time and below budget so that was that under budget too so anyway appreciate everybody that was up there if nothing else the uh item c the ija reports you want to address those yes sir um and uh i
Speaker 14
17:20
want to mention as we close out the projects we
Speaker 15
17:24
We'll be cutting a ribbon on Springdale Bypass and the XNA Airport Connector on September 4th, 9 o'clock a.m. I would like to invite you all to join us. There
Speaker 14
17:39
will be a big day for transportation in Arkansas for sure. This report details where we've allocated the federal highway dollars we receive from the Federal Highway Administration since the inception of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act bill.
For those who don't know, that's our typical highway bill or
Speaker 15
17:58
highway legislation. Most of our projects are funded through 80% of this funding. So RDOT pays the bill on projects, and we ask for reimbursement from the federal government. This sheet
Speaker 14
18:10
here, this report here, details where we've allocated that funding. I have any...
Speaker 90
18:26
Is it... Senator Flowers? Yes. What does
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
18:32
the S in parentheses behind these job names mean? Senator, that means state oversight. So
Speaker 93
18:39
in times past when the Federal Highway Administration had a
Speaker 15
18:43
more robust role in project oversight, they would select several projects each year, and those would have an F in parentheses behind them so we would know it's federal oversight. It just means it's state oversight.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
18:57
Okay. Do your jobs, the proposals for the jobs, have to be submitted
to the feds before getting approval of funding? Yes. Yes.
Yes, ma'am. How much leeway before these jobs started do you have to make that application? Well, before
Speaker 14
19:19
we start allocating or using that federal funding, we have a team of accountants
Speaker 15
19:25
that helps us manage that.
But we submit what we call a federal aid project agreement. It's basically a contract with the Federal Highway Administration on how we will use that funding, and we have to submit
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
19:40
that before we make an expenditure. Is
Speaker 42
19:43
it within months or a year? Oh, so usually a couple few months ahead of
Speaker 15
19:49
time, yes. Thank you. They have stipulations that we have to meet before they'll authorize that use. Okay. And
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
19:56
in terms of the state putting the money up
front and then getting reimbursed by the feds, does all that go through budget?
Speaker 15
20:08
So we go through biennial appropriation. And so we have an appropriation for that capital outlay, and that's how we pay those bills. So you have an
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
20:18
estimation of what kind of jobs and what kind of money it's going to take to complete the job? Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 82
20:28
Thank you. Any other questions on item C? If not, we will
Speaker 7
20:35
move to the quarterly land conveyances report, item D.
Speaker 14
20:38
Yes, sir. All right, so two quarters here covered. you only have one report because the only quarter we had conveyances were the the first quarter this is submitted for your information these are the three land conveyances that the commission
Speaker 20
20:53
made during these these six months we have any questions on item d
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
21:21
it thank you so these land transactions these were surplus property
Speaker 42
21:28
these yes these are properties that the Commission is relinquishing their ownership of yes ma'am
Speaker 15
21:35
so not not acquisitions property that we're
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
21:43
disposing of well how did the highway Commission come into possession
or ownership of the land in the first place
Speaker 62
21:54
which which which one there's three here I can run through them
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
21:58
if you like I'd like just to know you know where how we got the property and then what was the rationale for
Speaker 14
22:10
certainly yeah I'll run you through it real quickly the first one the 3.21 acres that was property acquired and without the details I'll spare you some of those but high level we acquired that property in 1961 so it could build out 40 okay
there was a tract we acquired for $3,900 part of a larger tract for I-40 there's a piece that's we held a drainage easement on 3.21 acres the landowner there wants to buy that drainage easement back from us that we acquired in 1961 we looked at it we determined we don't need that for highway purposes today and so the appraised fair market value being 4815 $4,815 we're selling that back to the landowner okay uh the next one if i run through
Speaker 15
23:25
Yes, it was a drainage easement that's really outside of that control of access fence that we don't need today, and so we
Speaker 120
23:36
can sell it back. No, no. Is that going to be
Speaker 62
23:40
the case on most of these, on these other two or three? They're going to be
Speaker 14
23:45
different situations. The next one's in Perigol with the Perigol bypass. We bought a track there to construct the bypass. The landowner
Speaker 15
23:51
became landlocked, And so when we have a landlocked situation and we try to buy that ground so we don't harm the landowner,
an adjacent landowner came to us and said they'd like to buy a portion of that landlocked piece. And so when that happens, we do try to make those transactions and dispose of that property. We don't want to hold on to the property the public wants if we don't need it. And so
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
24:16
that's what happened with the second one in Paragool. So the grantees bought
Speaker 15
24:20
a landlocked property? No, the highway department landlocked it with our new bypass. So we built a new road where there was no road before, and there was no access off the existing street network to that property.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
24:31
So the grantees now have access to it? The ones
Speaker 15
24:35
that we sold it to, yes. That's right. They had joined that tract.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
24:40
I wonder how much that costs to the state to
Speaker 14
24:43
build an access road. To build an access road will cost a lot more than we paid for
Speaker 15
24:50
that tract. Yes, ma'am. That's what we do, evaluation, and we check on
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
24:55
that as we develop the project. But the Highway Commission had the access road
Speaker 62
25:00
built, right? No, we built a new highway, the Paragool Bypass.
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
25:04
Yes, ma'am. And so the way you designed the build for the bypass, it did not landlock this property? Yes, that's
Speaker 15
25:14
inevitable. When you build a new road, that happens. these tracks aren't there you know they're typically laid out through the public land surveying system on a quarter quarter section and so there's typically going to be some landlocked pieces where there's certainly rural development out there so the property that
Speaker 123
25:37
landlocked the property that I didn't hear you
Speaker 42
25:45
the property that the hits purchased is not landlocked it's not landlocked because they have adjacent access they own the ground adjacent to their farm okay so they can access it now it's not landlocked any longer okay
Speaker 125
26:00
yes ma'am thank you you bet and what about the
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
26:06
other one the 214,000 let's see
Speaker 62
26:11
Okay, that one is with our Highway 112 suite of projects up in northwest Arkansas.
Speaker 14
26:18
We're widening Highway 112, about 20 miles of Highway 112. There was acquisition made there, and we were building a roundabout there to tie into some property. We bought that ground. uh the landowner came back to us and said hey i'm planning to develop that i'd like to
Speaker 15
26:36
buy some of that back from you highway commission and i'll get you access to it when i develop my property so that's what happened there so we sold back what we didn't have to have based on the change plans
that we expected from that development and so that's that's what that transaction is
Speaker 14
26:54
there and you can see by the uh the price it's 0.7 acres and uh 200 000 that that ground up there is selling for quite a quite a bit yeah i mean property value
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
27:06
that high up there yes ma'am okay thank you seeing no other
Speaker 82
27:16
questions uh you got anything else you would like to present to us i do i do if you
Speaker 62
27:22
have a few minutes I want to tell you a
Speaker 14
27:26
little bit about some other things that department's working on let's see all right so I talked to you before about our street smart program just wanted to update you on that street smart is a educational program that we developed using federal aid safety funds and it's It's a way that we can educate our young people about being safe drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists, passengers, all those things.
We unveiled our first round of this last year for middle school kids. We rolled it out in partnership with Secretary Oliva and the Department of Education, and it's starting to gain some traction. We built another round of that for high school age students, and it's released this week. To date, we've had about 500 materials requests. uh this topic these topics i talk about this uh frequently uh some of them were inspired from me teaching my own children how to drive recently and seeing some things that they need to know
about and things that make me kind of tense up in the passenger seat so this year we're covering topics like being safe around commercial motor vehicles knowing those blind spots what to do when an officer pulls you over what not to do how to be prepared for emergencies on the road impaired driving litter the roundabouts I mentioned earlier speeding being safe in work zones and pedestrian safety but if you I think hopefully we got some sound here I want to play the one that we shot recently about about litter
because it's been a heavy focus area for our dot this year I thought I'd play that
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
29:11
for you I don't see why you're so worried about this trick test all I'm saying is that if I failed that trick test I'm just gonna pretend it didn't You know that's not how grades work. Come on. It's just a little trash. Have some pride in where you live. Don't junk it up. And honestly, it's actually kind of dangerous. How? Stuff like that can hit someone,
or make drivers swerve in the road, especially if it's bigger than all of this. And think of the people who have to go out and clean up the litter. It's dangerous for them, too. Right. Well, I didn't
Speaker 136
29:42
think about it that way. that way and actually
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
29:45
it's illegal like you can get fined for that wait seriously yeah you'll get a ticket then you have another piece of trash to worry about one that costs money good to know before i tried
Speaker 137
29:56
it all right you want to save the world real quick one nasty bag at a time
Speaker 134
30:04
stay street smart if this spills on me i'm blaming you you
Speaker 15
30:19
know that's fair it's one of our more light-hearted videos but they all come with a serious message behind them and i'm glad we're able to to do this uh my kids i'll show them to my kids they range from nine to 17 almost and they I showed them some of these new batch videos and they they want to see
the next one they like them it's resonating with with these kids and I reported the commission today we actually received two national awards for this work and so my ask for you is please tell your your friends your teacher friends my parents are both school teachers I know how tough that job is but if you could help us get into schools we believe this is going to really make impact and improve safety in arkansas so would ask some help for that and then next year we will go to elementary school age material that'll be being a safe bus rider knowing how to you know navigate
and when to cross the street things like that we want to make sure we have a package that touches all of our kids so that's that's our next step yes
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
31:26
i'm sorry thank you mr chairman so right right here in front of you i've got just a couple questions mr chairman if that's okay uh so um is there a place because my my daughter's learning how to drive right now uh but she's homeschooled is there a place for homeschool students to go to
Speaker 41
31:40
see this material online yes sir thank you for your question so streetsmartar.org okay it's
Speaker 15
31:45
all there all the lessons for all each groups and again my my junior in high school he likes the middle school material and vice versa so yes we'll get that link to the group make sure we send it over here but it's out there and we have some informational brochures we've built as well perfect I will definitely
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
32:02
point her in that direction one of the things
you mentioned in in the videos one of the concerns as a driver that I've seen not only you know you have an
para-driver intoxication inattention but I think the third one is in patience people just getting too impatient speeding yes any material in here that's covering the importance of being patient on the road yes so that we have a video about speeding in there and about being patient
Speaker 62
32:30
it kind of folds into a lot of these topics being patient around
Speaker 15
32:36
commercial motor vehicles and knowing how to stay out of those blind spots and not ride their bumpers so yes that's that's kind of a
common theme throughout all this and on our website too if you can't remember the street smart ar.org you can go to r.gov and it's linked there too and you can
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
32:55
get all that material okay perfect and my final question semi semi-related um talk
to us about um self-driving cars um i was just at an ai conference and um i saw several vehicles that had no steering wheels because they don't need steering wheels. They drive themselves. And as we start going into the future, that's going to be coming more and more commonplace.
And who knows, our grandkids may not ever have to learn how to drive anymore because the cars are doing it for us. What, if anything, is your department kind of doing in those to try to make sure that we're prepared for that future
and that drivers are aware that, like it or not, they're going to be on our
Speaker 15
33:34
streets soon? Yes, sir. I think, you know, we know that connected and autonomous vehicles are here, and they're only going to multiply our big thing right now is we're trying to stay plugged into the conversation understand what allows those to operate safely and we want to make sure we're
doing our best one of those things that we focus on heavily in arkansas is good stripping on our highway system we know that's important and so we know that helps those drivers and those vehicles be more safe we are you guys tasked us with overseeing autonomous trucks in arkansas and so so we have a permitting process we're looking at for those. But those do require operator and seat in the vehicle, so it's not fully autonomous. But, yes, that is the future, Representative Meeks, and where we go, I don't know if we're going to the Jetsons' age or not,
but I think ultimately there will be a day when most people aren't driving a car themselves for sure. You know, when
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
34:28
I was out at that AI conference, I was driving back to the hotel, and I had an autonomous vehicle actually pull out in front of me, drove down the road, put on its blinker, turned right, and went down the road completely by itself. And I don't know if I fully trust getting into one yet, but the statistics say they're a lot safer than humans. So I just want to make sure that as a state we're taking those initial steps,
and it sounds like we are to get ready for that
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
35:04
future. Yes, sir, we are. Thank you. Representative Lederman, you recognize? Well, I didn't know y'all were making these videos, But Colonel Hager of Public Safety Department, he presented to one of our committees a police stop or a state highway stop that went south, went bad. And I asked him about, I said, well, you know, a lot of people don't know how to react when they get stopped by a police officer.
I mean, my dad was a police officer, so I know exactly what to do. But a lot of people may not. And I said, you know, we need a video, a training video, that we should use that when young kids are getting their license. And I talked to him about that. And then he sent me that video, I guess the one that you made, about how do you react when you get stopped by a police officer. And it was very well done. And I believe that's really going to help a lot of people on the road to know what to do.
Because, like you said, if you're stopped for the first time and you're a little nervous and all that and don't know what to do, it can go south pretty quick. So that
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
36:17
was a really good job. Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. It's not intuitive, and it's something these kids need to hear about. Yes, sir. Senator Flowers is
recognized. Thank you. You said schools could access the videos by going to that streetsmartar.org.
So it has to be requested. And then what? Does the Highway Commission send them a copy of a video? Well, they
Speaker 15
36:38
can request it. They can go out there and grab it. The lesson plans are already built. There are quizzes. There are interactive games, those videos. So all the work, the legwork, we feel like has been done. They just need to pull that material down and use it. So, yes, we'd love to have them call us or go on the website, however they want to access the material that's out
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
36:59
there. Well, does the Department of Ed help to distribute this to the schools?
Speaker 15
37:03
We work with them. Part of the curriculum? Yes, man, we work with them, and they helped us to, you know, we had a focus group of teachers and administrators when we developed that curriculum, and our team and our creative services group worked. but you know i'm not sure what that looks like for their process we made it accessible for all but i'd have to ask secretary oliva what their process looks like i don't think it's it's not mandated that it be in their curriculum
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
37:29
it seems like it'd be a part of some curriculum like health and safety i don't know what they call it now
but even physical education i mean seems like it would
be a natural fit in some courses for junior high and senior high students yes ma'am i agree with you
Speaker 15
37:45
and i think when we see that taking root in some school districts that's where it's finding itself in those health classes for middle schoolers and we want to make sure there's a a good spot for it for those high school students as well even an assignment the teacher gives them at the end of the day just to come back and report back on it the next day it doesn't take long
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
38:07
to watch that couple minute video well i appreciate the video you showed particularly that little segment on litter
i wish more uh i guess that would have been built up a little bit more on the way up from pine bluff today there's a bunch of uh insulation in the middle of the of the interstate so hopefully you'll get that up yes some contractor did that let it
Speaker 42
38:31
blow out uh if i may i'll segment uh segue into my next part of this. That's where I was going next. It's been a
Speaker 14
38:39
focus area for our agency this year. I hope you've seen our litter letters. They're, I believe, making an impact. I talked
Speaker 15
38:45
about this. I'll mention it briefly here. I wanted to make sure that we had a show of force at RDOT in the spring to, if anybody drove the highway system, they'd see people in orange vests picking up litter, and we did it two years in a row. Last year we did it. We picked up 6,500 bags of trash in one day this year it got so popular our staff in the office wanted to volunteer too and so we had more participation and we picked up 14,000 bags of litter in one day and all week it was
over 20,000 the problem is real as you know so we're trying to pick it up we're trying to keep it cleaned up we're also trying to educate and we're also working on enforcement I sent you a letter end of june to each one of you i hope you saw it let you know that we are going to be using our highway police team to help us enforce trash haulers who are loads and loads and i i got a video i don't have it here with me but you can see on the screen uh we have a lot of footage we're we're falling trucks and the trash
Speaker 14
39:49
is blowing off but it's not about tickets it's about
education ultimately enforcement education and so we've had over 200 groups in that last two months reach out to us about how to properly secure their load so that's a good thing we're celebrating that as a win we're also writing some citations and warnings we've written 94 warnings as of monday and 78
Speaker 15
40:09
citations for this kind of thing rdott spent nearly 11 million dollars last year on litter we're tracking to be up in the 12 13 million probably this year we'd rather spend that somewhere else but we do know we have an obligation to try to keep things clean
Speaker 14
40:26
next i just want to brief you update you on this too we talked here about it before i told you we're training our staff on human trafficking prevention and awareness we we have 4 000 workers around the state we're everywhere every
Speaker 15
40:45
day we want to make sure they know what to see and look out for and so just wanted to report back we have completed that everybody has been trained our interns have been trained this summer new employees as they onboard they'll be trained on
what to look for who to call should they see something that looks off so I just wanted to make sure you guys knew we were doing that Howie police has been doing a great job of that through the years through the multiple task force they work on but it's something that we've taken up with the rest of our staff and I feel like it's going to make an impact we lit up our building blue
Speaker 14
41:20
to recognize this human trafficking effort in July on July 30th I don't know if you saw that or not, but a picture of it there on the screen.
Speaker 82
41:35
Next up. Representative Rye, do you have a question or
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
41:39
a comment? Yes, sir, I do. Mr. Wiley, I'll tell you what. I'm very happy about something that's fixing to happen for Jonesboro, Truman, and Bay. um we have been holding up water in jonesboro because big bay ditch has not been cleaned out since 1971 that's supposed to be completed next year and i really hope that that takes a lot of
water and flooding away from jonesboro and truman and bay area
Speaker 14
42:15
real quick another campaign too that we're working towards this year five or a slowdown phone down works on safety remains a important topic for us I know we had some help my represent car thank you for carrying some legislation for us last year to help keep our workers safer and I believe it's making an impact those screen lights but slowdown phone down year five we're wrapping up
that campaign this year but I hope you've seen some of our commercials are spots out there these are these are not actors these are real r-dot workers whose lives have been changed by inattentive drivers and work zones and i just i just wanted to play one of those here for you this is miss sandra
Speaker 15
42:56
skaggs um her husband was struck mowing on 365 art street a dump truck passed and struck him and he was debilitated and we didn't think he was going to make it and he's still fighting every day to to recover but uh just play this for you on the day
Speaker 157
43:12
of the accident, Terry was mowing on the side of the road when an 18-wheeler wasn't paying attention and came up from behind and hit him. For weeks, Terry couldn't wake up, but when he did, he had to relearn everything from moving his finger, moving his arm, even remembering who I was. Terry's making such wonderful progress. There are small victories every day, but the life we knew is gone now and it only took a second to take it away
Speaker 15
43:41
and you know unfortunately their story's not
unique happens all too often so we're working hard to get the
Speaker 14
43:48
word out about the importance of work zone safety and in all that we do we're also working now you'll see us here at the capitol september 8th speaker evans challenged us to work on a
Speaker 15
43:59
move over campaign aimed at letting the public know what they're supposed to do when they see flashing lights on the side of the highway blue lights red lights amber lights or even somebody's mother pulled over changing a tire so many people get hit and clip because the public just doesn't seem to
give away and move over so we're working on a new campaign for that we'll be here in front of the Capitol that day announcing that campaign starting in
Speaker 62
44:29
September just one more piece here before I close we have gone live with our on
Speaker 14
44:35
the dot r.podcast we're working hard to communicate better than ever before and there are a lot of great questions you guys you've had a lot today that the public has and so we want to be able to answer those questions with them through this podcast form it's a really effective way
inexpensive way to get the word out we dropped our first episode on july 30th we'll have monthly episodes at first and hopefully that cadence picks up and maybe goes to every two weeks or every week we'll just have to see how that how that goes but we want to tackle those topics that the public wants to hear about and i think it's going to gain traction we're now on apple spotify and amazon music and the reception has been good so far so just wanted you to know that it's out there and of course ask r dot continues that's uh our program that we use to track our inquiries from
Speaker 15
45:27
the public we were receiving about 900 a month when that started we're down to about 750 a month now in that system but the public knows it's out there and they're using it
Speaker 14
45:41
and i think we're communicating better than before but we still want to keep growing so that's that's my update and then tomorrow michelle davenport our chief legal counsel she'll be back down here at the capitol
Speaker 15
45:53
before the administrative rules subcommittee to talk about two rule promulgations
that we have right now there was legislation passed that required the promulgation of rules for license plate readers so we've done that our rules mimic state police's rules those will be talked about in committee tomorrow and then we also had a couple pieces of legislation that required us to update our permit rules for the movement of oversized and overweight vehicles and so those will be in front of the committee tomorrow as well thank
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
46:29
you mr. chair and that was one of my questions we're getting a lot of complaints
about flop cameras and I just wondered if you guys were getting complaints I don't know if they call them flop cameras but the cameras that you have when the men and women are working oh oh the on
Speaker 15
46:49
the the work zone enforcement cameras we you know I was we don't we don't hear many complaints
Speaker 14
46:55
about those I was really concerned about that at first when we expanded that used to hands-free detection but I think what really saves
Speaker 15
47:02
us there from that is that people know when they leave that work
zone where they're gonna be stopped inside it or not so it's not a ticket by mail system there's none of that it's just an extra set of eyes for our officers out there and it's making another big impact we see excessive speeding in those work zones down 80 percent based on the data we see phone touches drop dramatically in those work zones since we've installed those works on cameras and you know there's a lot of narrative out there about privacy and I respect that but we don't retain that data unless somebody is cited and we
have that picture we can take with us to court but beyond that the data goes away and it's wiped and we
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
47:44
don't we don't keep that data okay so don't hear much about that and one other question you I think you mentioned in the beginning that you had a video about training people how to use the the what are they called the around the roundabouts yeah roundabouts so do you have that video I do it's online
Speaker 42
48:02
I don't know if this is connected to the web
Speaker 14
48:06
or not but yes we have that I'll
We'll share all those with the group. It's on that streetsmartar.org. All the videos are out
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
48:13
there. Okay. I'm having complaints in Fort Smith because I hear we're going to get one somewhere on Rogers Avenue. Is that that 74th and Rogers? I think so. Yes, ma'am. Okay. We're already
getting complaints, so we're going to need some help with that. Education is important, and
Speaker 15
48:32
we'll be glad to help you with that. This video we shot is a two-minute video from a father-daughter perspective.
The daughter's learning how to drive. But we also have another video that's a little more adult-oriented on the ways to navigate the roundabout. So happy to share those with
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
48:50
you. Okay. There's some things going on in Fort Smith because of the elections. Maybe I could talk to you and Keith. You guys could come and talk about that. It's called Overdrinks, and they talk about different things in the community, and
they have question and answer for people so that they can understand things.
Speaker 15
49:12
We'd enjoy that. Absolutely. A lot of good things going on in that area, too, with the progress on 49. So we have plenty to
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
49:18
talk about. That part's good. We need a little help with the administration. If you can help with that. I don't know
Speaker 7
49:27
if I can. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. That is all on our agendas. you have anything else you would like to talk about no sir thank you for your time today uh i do appreciate and we want to thank everyone and congratulate the ones that were involved in the awards that you received and thank everybody for being here today and everything that you do
we appreciate it anything else from committee members if not we we probably unless something comes up probably won't meet until november but we'll put that out if it changes before that so anyway
Speaker 129
50:02
thank everybody for being here we're adjourned
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Report of 2026 3rd and 4th Quarter Reports on the Progress of Each Highway Construction Project of $10 million or More as Required by A.C.A. 27-65-107(a)(19) [Exhibit B1-B2] - Jared Wiley, Director, Arkansas Department of Transportation (ARDOT)
C. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) Reports [Exhibit C1-C2] - Jared Wiley, Director, ARDOT
D. Report of 2026 1st Quarterly Land Conveyances [Exhibit D] - Jared Wiley, Director, ARDOT
E. Other Business
F. Adjournment
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Speaker 2
Speaker 12
Speaker 7
Speaker 14
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
Speaker 15
Speaker 38
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
Speaker 42
Speaker 23
Speaker 30
Speaker 52
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
Speaker 62
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
Representative John P. Carr
Unverified
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Speaker 78
Speaker 66
Speaker 82
Speaker 90
Senator Stephanie Flowers
Unverified
Speaker 93
Speaker 20
Speaker 110
Speaker 120
Speaker 104
Speaker 123
Speaker 125
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
Speaker 136
Speaker 137
Speaker 134
Speaker 41
Speaker 156
Speaker 157
Speaker 129