Ark. highway officials put I-40 project on hold (UALR Public Radio) - State highway officials have decided to hold off on taking bids on an east Arkansas interstate project because of uncertainty over federal funding.

Bids were to be opened Tuesday on the roughly $24 million project to reconfigure the east Interstate 40 and Interstate 55 interchange at West Memphis, but Arkansas Highway Commission members decided to drop the project from a list of 12 scheduled for bid openings.

The project entails redesigning lanes and ramps to make it smoother and safer for traffic to move from one interstate to the other. The I-40/I-55 project was the most expensive on the list.

Last week, U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said her agency would delay and even cut back payments for state road and bridge construction nationwide because the federal Highway Trust Fund had been depleted. The federal government typically covers 80 percent of the costs of a project on all highways.

Arkansas highway officials say they have 408 project contracts with outstanding bills totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Federal reimbursements also provide money to pay down bond debt arising from the state's $1 billion, five-year program to rebuild two-thirds of the interstate system in Arkansas. Arkansas receives about $505 million annually in federal reimbursements.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. © Copyright 2009, UALR Public Radio