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• 1 2018-05-01T20:05:04-07:00 Roadways & Routes 29 plain 2018-11-06T20:33:44-08:00 When the First District Agricultural School campus was founded in 1910, it was quite rural and oriented toward the two railroads at its south end rather than the expansive road networks that would surround it a century later. By the 1960s, passenger rail service was undergoing its last heyday throughout the nation, and the newly renamed Arkansas State University began to be more of a hub of automobile transit instead. Yet, the campus had plenty of growing pains as it struggled to keep up with the onslaught of motorists. A 1961 report bluntly stated that "Narrow, unplanned streets need widening and improvement," and also warned that "suitable parking lots must be provided. This is already a major problem and will become more pressing in the future" [1]. 

  Highway 49 Bypass Controversy

  Slowly but surely, several roads were widened around campus, including Dean Street, Aggie Road, Johnson Avenue, and what would later be renamed as University Loop. While these improvements were generally welcomed, they could be somewhat contentious at times as well. In a 1977 interview, former president Carl Reng related that one particular road project took some wrangling. (Listen to it here.) He says, "They built this new [State Highway 49] bypass through the campus. If you come across the bypass now on the viaduct, you'll look and follow the section line which they always do, they go right through the middle of our stadium. We hadn't built the stadium yet, but I knew that's where I wanted to build it. So when they started laying that bypass out, I threw a fit. Because they had it staked out right down the section and wouldn't have left room on either side of the road to build a stadium."
  
  "Well, they were going through college land, and I had a hard time getting them to swing the highway out and around. I threatened to charge them $10,000 an acre for college land if they didn't. And if they did [alter the route], we'd give it to them. Well, I was bluffing because I didn't think I could charge them for state land in the first place.... [But] we did convince the highway department. As you come across that viaduct [today], if you'll notice, it swings out and goes around the stadium" [2].
  
  Incidentally, the section of the bypass surrounding A-State is now the busiest stretch of road in Jonesboro, according to the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department. In 2017, the average daily traffic count for the road was approximately 40,000, even higher than the 36,000 vehicles per day on the busiest section of the Interstate 555 bypass. Twenty years prior, the traffic count at its intersection with Aggie Road was less than half of that, only 18,000. In 2013, the name of a section of the road was changed to Red Wolf Boulevard in honor of the new university mascot [3].

  Marion Berry Parkway

  Ironically, with the gradual growth of automobile ownership among students over time, the railroad lines separating the campus from much of Jonesboro became more of an obstacle to the university than the asset they began as. As more and more students were commuting to campus--and getting waylaid by trains in the process-- the idea of an overpass took hold. While the Highway 49 bypass solved some of the problems, it was not central enough to substitute for the main Caraway Rd entrance.
  
  As late as 1997 the master plan called for emphasizing the Caraway Rd entrance, as a substitute overpass seemed far in the future. A campus design study that year stated that "An overpass bridge has been proposed and preliminary studies performed by the State Department of Transportation. However, funding to implement the plan has not been available. There is concern over the visual intrusion of such an overpass, because of its potential height and length." Several years of rapid growth made it more urgent, however, and the route finally opened in 2011 [4].

  Road Removals

  Just as the new overpass opened, however, the Caraway Rd entrance was closed to traffic-- a drastic change for both students and the Caraway Rd businesses that relied on campus traffic. However, there was already a long history of road removals in and around Arkansas State, as the older system of regular blocks was replaced by a combination of cul-de-sacs and services roads in addition to four-lane thoroughfares. The first road to disappear was actually a curved road behind Wilson Hall, in the 1960s; even today the crescent-shaped routes is barely visible in the mall landscape [5].
  
  Planning documents for the university created in 1997 emphasized a need to reduce roads further in the campus core, and sections of North Caraway Rd and Aggie Rd were converted to pedestrian-only areas. The university's 2012 master plan calls for even bolder road removals to be made, yet in the five years since then other alternatives have sometimes been selected. A complete rebuilding of the eastern Aggie Road corridor in 2017 did not feature a traffic circle with Olympic Drive and University Loop West as specified in the plan, but new crosswalks and a pedestrian island were in keeping with the underlying spirit of these changes.
  
  [1] Larry Ball and William Clements, Voices from State: An Oral History of Arkansas State University (Arkansas State University, 1984), 45.
  [2] Carl R. Reng, interview by Larry Ball and William Clements, December 5, 1979, recording, MidSouth Center for Oral History, Archives & Special Collections, Dean B. Ellis Library, Arkansas State University, 200-240.
  [3] Arkansas Department of Transportation, "Annual Average Daily Traffic Estimates," arkansashighways.com, accessed May 1, 2018, www.arkansashighways.com/System_Info_and_Research/traffic_info/traffic_map.aspx.
  [4] Stuck Associates, "Campus Design Study: Site Analysis and Goal-Setting Workshop Report, ASU," May 1997, 10, Archives & Special Collections, Dean B. Ellis Library, Arkansas State University.
  [5] Keith Boles, "ASU's new overpass not all it's cracked up to be," KAIT8.com, November 29, 2011, accessed May 1, 2018, www.kait8.com/story/16146113/marion-berry-parkway-in-jonesboro-dedicated-tuesday.