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"City developers have a new plan to relieve the traffic cluster around the Northwest Arkansas Mall.Van Asche Drive in Fayetteville is where city planners want to widen and straighten the street to give drivers an alternative route to the mall.\u00A0Fayetteville city engineer Chris Brown said they want to widen Van Ashe into four lanes under Interstate 540 making it a more improved route between Garland Avenue and Greg Street. \u00A0\u00A0Van Ashe is very curvy near Rupple road.Brown said this project will eliminate that winding route that causes a lot of traffic.Brown told 40/29 news the 4.5 million dollars they need to pay for the project will come out of the city\u2019s transportation bond fund.\u201COf course the mall area and the business park is certainly an economic engine we want to make sure we have as many routes as possible into and out of,\u201D said Brown.Construction is expected to start in 2014 when a bid in Tuesday\u2019s city council meeting is approved.Another construction project is also up for discussion in Tuesday\u2019s city council meeting.Fayetteville city engineer Chris Brown told 40/29 news the bridges on Maple and Lafayette Street are historically some of the oldest bridges in Arkansas.City developers want to preserve the historical value of the bridges while still making it look brand new.Brown said with the growing number of University students that live near the bridges... improving sidewalks near those bridges will provide more space for pedestrians to walk.\u201CWe plan on closing one of them at a time and coordinating traffic so at least one of the bridges will be opened at all times it will certainly be an inconvenience,\u201D said Brown.City developers said they want people to come out to Tuesday\u2019s open forum meeting at 4 p.m. at city hall to look at designs for the bridges.Brown said if the project is approved it will take about three to four months to reconstruct each bridge.\u00A0"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.4029tv.com/article/city-leaders-want-community-input-on-new-construction-projects/4950821>