I-49 is nothing we should be interested in. Most of us like NWA and Fayetteville the way it is. A bunch of longhaul traffic through here will just mean a bunch more fast food and gas stations. I grew up near West Memphis, its a tumor. NWA is a beautiful place to live, I would hate to see it turn into yet another truckstop city.

Economic growth does not mean just routing more traffic through your city. And access is important for some types of economic growth, but are we really expecting a bunch of manufacturing jobs to roll into town? Of course not. We need to be looking at high-tech industry and tourism.

Ft. Smith would need to add bus service to Van Buren – not sure why this doesn’t exist already, plus Van Buren needs to add a hotel downtown as to attract people. The same would be said for people traveling to Fayetteville. Once the new hotels open up people could easily access them and stay comfortably downtown. All without driving. This is more geared towards the community and not the intermodal transport. I’m sure there is room for improvement here as well.