New responsibilities included: Public Transportation: The Department was to administer federal and State funds for planning, implementing, improving and operating public transportation programs in Arkansas.
Rail: The AHTD was authorized to plan, coordinate and administer a State Rail Plan to ensure the preservation of local rail services.
Air and Water: State and local airport commissions and the Arkansas Waterways Commission were directed to inform the Highway Commission regarding planned improvements to best achieve a comprehensive growth plan for Arkansas. As is obvious, the Department now dealt with more than just highways. The addition of these new responsibilities made the name change necessary and appropriate.
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE The role of the AHTD, and a possible renaming of the agency, came up again in 2015 with release of the Report of the Legislative Task Force on Intermodal Transportation and Commerce. The 89th General Assembly created the Task Force in 2013 to study issues relating to intermodal transportation and commerce, and to develop recommendations relating to the subject. The findings of the task force requested that the Task Force be re-established by act of the 90th General Assembly in 2015 in order to more fully explore the establishment of an Arkansas Department of Transportation with combined responsibility for highways, waterways and ports, rail and aeronautics. Among other things, the Task Force would recommend that the following be considered:
• The structure of any newly formed Department of
• Identifying funding sources for the new Department of Transportation to promote and develop a coordinated multimodal transportation system.
• Development of a plan for a seamless and cost-effective transition into the newly formed Department of Transportation. “I appreciate the Legislature’s recognition that there could be benefits of an Arkansas Department of Transportation,” states AHTD Director Scott Bennett. “The main concern, as always, is to ensure that all modes of transportation have adequate funding for maintaining and improving their specific system. However, all these modes rely on each other and feed
Transportation, taking into account the constitutional
off each other, so it seems to make good business sense
nature of the Arkansas State Highway Commission,
to have them all housed under one agency. This will
the existing legislatively created Arkansas Waterways
allow us to bring Arkansas’ transportation system into
Commission and Arkansas Department of Aeronautics,
the 21st Century and continue moving us successfully
and the possibility of modal divisions.
into the future.”
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