Central Arkansas leaders endorse new bridge design

County Judge Buddy Villines and the Pulaski County Quorum Court must be totally loony, 100 percent crazy and power mad if they spend $20 million on two steel arches to create a new "signature" Broadway Bridge. People don't care how a bridge looks. All we care about is how many lanes it has, how long traffic is backed up at rush-hour, and how many bridges there are between North Little Rock and Little Rock. There must be a million other things the county could do with $20 million to improve roads and bridges, such as: * saving the money for the county's share of the usual cost overruns on the new bridge. * adding extra lanes for cars or the downtown trolley and rerouting the trolley to use the Main Street bridge going into Argenta and then past the Dickey-Stevens Ball Park and across the Broadway Bridge into Little Rock at the Robinson Center. * using the funds as a down-payment on either a fourth downtown bridge at midtown or moving the old Broadway Bridge to near Pike Avenue in North Little Rock. * saving the funds for other emergency work that comes up in the future. * splitting the cost with the cities to finally connect Jacksonville and Sherwood with one or two highway access roads. * splitting the cost with Sherwood and Jacksonville on two parallel two-lane roads without bridges to connect U.S. 67/167 with Arkansas Hwy. 107 near Gravel Ridge if the North Belt isn't going to be built. * loaning Jacksonville money to build exits and on-ramps at Coffelt Crossing until the state coughs up the money for an overpass and reimburses Jacksonville. * splitting the cost with Little Rock's city government on a new north-south four-lane road to allow people living outside the city limits in far west Little Rock to get from Hwy. 10 to Hwy. 5 near the Bryant-Benton area without having to back-track to Interstate 430. * and, finally, loaning the money to the cities for regional projects that benefit county and

Perhaps, Villines is quite correct in his quote. A few government officials get together, decide on an overpriced project, decide that certain individuals' names will be plastered on it, stick the citizens with the bill, and the citizens do not have a vote, a say, or a way to stop it. It does sound remarkably similar to what passes for American democracy these days.

I almost barfed reading that "the county could fund this $79m project"...BUT WE CAN'T CLEAN OUR STREETS UP OF THE SLIME THAT IS KEEPING US FROM WALKING ABOUT SAFELY OR LEAVING OUR HOUSES TO THEIR THIEVING. We get threatened with DANGEROUS CRIMINALS being let loose on our streets (even tho' there is a multitude of NON violent criminals locked up)if we don't approve tax to build more prison beds. I FEEL LIKE STANDING WITH A SIGN OUT AT THE AIRPORT WARNING PEOPLE THAT LITTLE ROCK IS A CESSPOOL OF CRIME AND TO WATCH THEIR BACK. And to especially AVOID the RIVER MARKET district....dammmm people WHERE ARE YOUR PRIORITIES? Buy those concrete blocks and put the inmates to work building a 10000 capacity building PLAIN JANE and start putting all the thugs in there...clean our streets up and CRIME WILL GO DOWN. Then we will deserve TOURISTS. 'And YES ATOMIC PHART my sentiments too...this bridge will put little rock on the INTERNATIONAL MAP. HAHAHAA

Please, make Buddy go away!

"Judge Buddy Villines said the bridge will be one more attraction to Central Arkansas." LOLOLOL Yeah, 10s of people will come from AROUND THE WORLD to see this Pork Project Buddy MUST build. (I wonder which buddy of Buddy's will be making the 79mil and kicking some back to him?)