wasteful

@whocares. You are talking about bringing jobs to Arkansas, this is what the project would do. You'll have Arkansans working on it in some form, you'll have material bought in the area, thus helping the economy. So, that part of your argument is defeated. As far as the bridge itself, its a piece of crap. Has been for years. Why spend the money to "repair it" just to have to come back in a few years and spend more on it or replace it then?

i vote for creating more jobs for Arkansas, instead of worrying about a brigde i see nothing wrong wit the old bridge honestly, create more jobs then start talking about something worth reading

Neither design is workable. Dahms proposed a single cable-stayed pier in the center of the bridge, but his deck design provides NO room for the pier or cables. But that's nothing compared to the problems with Murphy's idea: too ornamental, too expensive, no provision for the huge anchors required for traditional suspension cables, and one of the cables would block the exit onto LaHarpe. Of all the proposals I've seen, IMO the *only* one that's workable is the Garver Engineers proposal (in Category II on the website). It's a cable-stayed design with a single pier in the river like Dahms' (thus no blocking the LaHarpe off-ramp), but with towers split on each side so it won't require mid-deck space like Dahms' single tower. It also has the advantage of potentially allowing some pier construction to be done before the existing bridge is closed, shortening the disruption from the closure enough to justify any additional cost.