Jonah makes good points in his Beltway-Bandits post

No one wants to comment on this after it has been online all day? I guess I have to say a few words.
This grandiose plan has all the potental drawbacks Jonah points out. But the Fayetteville City Council had to join the plan or lose whatever influence Fayetteville may have in the future plan. The same argument worked on all the towns that signed on.
I hope the Fayetteville Council and the next mayor will push to see that planning for light rail takes precedence over the building of another giant bypass for trucks and cars around the excess population corridor of Northwest Arkansas.
There is a need for study. But the obvious thing is to make a deal to use the existing railway routes and take back some of the lost ones and just find out how to do it and get it done.
This may bump a trail or two but the trails can run alongside the rail line in some places to make the connections.
aub-unique comment on The Iconoclast's comment on the Northwest Arkansas Council's beltway plan and Art Hobson's column in the Northwest Arkansas Times on the massive highway plan:
See
Boondoggling by the Beltway Bandits for the original comment and links to related material.
Many people recognized back when the Rails to Trails program began that those routes would someday be needed again. In Northwest Arkansas, someday is NOW.
Put money in the bus lines and get people riding them and push the light rail. Nobody needs to spend a dime on feasibility and such. Just put every dime into creating a light-rail system. At best, it would take several years to get it built and operating.
So build the windmills and put a solar panel on every roof and wean Northwest Arkansas off dependence on the automobile and cut to the chase.
Does anyone else remember when the I-540 and Fulbright corridor around Fayetteville was first dredged out of the landscape to create the Fayetteville bypass? It was a dangerous two-lane road with cross roads without stop lights.
But it was a beautiful drive from south to north. There were no business signs and no businesses along it for awhile. It took a big swath of pristine hardwood forest out of the landscape, but it was bordered by forest and always pleasant in daylight.
Us naive tree-hugging environmentalists (outdoor writer in my case) assumed it would be kept that way.
Now it is ugly except in short stretches such as through the Marinoni property and more dangerous than when it had ground-level crossings.
Giant lights over car lots and such make night-travel dangerous, and the opening of the interstate to Alma and Fort Smith has brought through traffic in abundance.
Another "bypass" may be a nice addition to a Houston to Chicago route for trucks and speed addicts, but it will cost us hundreds of beautiful acres of wildlife habitat and slow this area's inevitable acceptance of mass transit.
Let's hope our representatives on the body will exercise their influence even if they will never be accepted on the ruling council for the region and see that wise choices are made NOW!