Arkansas House, Senate committees to meet in Fort Smith (Updated)

Discussions about and the promotion of Interstate 49 and the Regional Intermodal Transportation Authority are likely to be the top focus of a Mar. 17-18 gathering in Fort Smith of the Arkansas House Interim Committee on Public Transportation and the Senate Interim Committee on Transportation, Technology and Legislative Affairs.

Updated info: Ivy Owen, executive director of the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority, is seeking signatures to a petition supporting I-49. Link here for detals.

“The goal of these meetings is to inform the members of these committees about the progress of the Regional Intermodal Transportation Authority (RITA) which the General Assembly approved funding for during the regular session,” Rep. Stephanie Malone, R-Fort Smith and a member of the House Public Transportation Committee, said in a statement. “It is also my goal to empress (sic) upon my fellow colleagues the importance of the completion of Interstate 49 and the impact it has on the Fort Smith Regional economy. I also want to make them aware that this region is working together to ensure the completion of this project. Legislators from Oklahoma are also being contacted and encouraged to attend.”

Legislators on the committee are expected to gather at Noon, Mar. 17 for a lunch at the Smith-Pendergraft Campus Center at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith. A joint committee meeting will begin at 12:30 and conclude at 1:30 p.m, when a the legislators and local officials will conduct a bus tour of areas of interest in Fort Smith and Van Buren.

The joint committee will reconvene at 10 a.m., Mar. 18 at Graphic Packaging plant at Chaffee Crossing. The meeting is expected to end by Noon, Malone said.

Matt Pitsch, who is leading the planning and strategy for the Regional Intermodal Transportation Authority, said the meeting will give the authority board a chance to meet with legislators and share recently approved RITA goals.

RITA short- and long-term goals include: efficient railroad system to serve Chaffee Crossing; developing 50 acre intermodal/transportation sites at Chaffee Crossing and in Van Buren; development of transportation master plan that includes rail-truck-barge infrastructure; and a 1,000-acre economic development site.

“The Joint Transportation Committee has never met in Western Arkansas before, so lets give them a dose of the regional excitement that is going on throughout our region,” Pitsch wrote in a meeting notice to the RITA board of directors.

Rep. Bill Sample, R-Hot Springs, is chairman of the House Public Transportation Committee. Sen. John Paul Capps, D-Searcy, is chair of the Senate Committee on Transportation, Technology and Legislative Affairs.