LITTLE ROCK – Work is being done in bits and pieces for two new cross-country interstate highways that will run through Arkansas. Don’t expect to drive on either one soon.

“I hope someday my grandkids will read about it and say, ’Well, that old fool was right,”’ said Desha County Judge Mark McElroy, the county’s top elected administrator.

Interstate 69 will run through southern Arkansas and I-49 will snake through the mountains in the western part of the state. I-69 is barely on the drawing board, though some work is under way on a Monticello bypass that will eventually become part of it.

U.S. Rep. Mike Ross, whose district is home to both projects, said a former congressman who fought for a northwest Arkansas four-lane highway gave him a useful perspective.

“I asked Mr. (John Paul) Hammerschmidt how long it took him to get I-540 done” between Interstate 40 and far northwestern Arkansas, said Ross, D-Ark.

“He said, ‘Oh, about 25 years,”’ Ross recalled. The highway opened 10 years ago.

Interstate 49 will eventually meet with I-540, creating a link between southern Louisiana and Kansas City, Mo. Interstate 69 is part of a planned route between Mexico and the upper Midwest.

“They announced I-69 in Indianapolis five years before I was born, and I’m 48,” Ross said in a recent interview. “I’d love to tell folks that these two highways are going to be completed in the short term, but that isn’t going to happen.”

A big reason for the long time frame for both highways is the price tag. Ross estimated it would cost $5.9 billion overall to complete the roads.

According to the state Highway and Transportation Department, $985 million has already been spent on various phases of I-49, with $87 million in spending scheduled through 2010. There are no corresponding figures for spending on I-69 in Arkansas because no segments of the road have been completed, spokesman Glenn Bolick said.

McElroy said a paper mill’s rail spur near the proposed route had to be moved so the tracks wouldn’t cross the highway.

“I think as far as digging into dirt-wise, it’s going to be a while down the road,” he said. But he was excited when highway officials began talking to landowners along the route, which will cross the Mississippi River north of Arkansas City.

Dan Flowers, director of the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, said completion of the Great River Bridge is years away because of its $1 billion cost. Federal officials want financing in place before work can begin on a single project of more than a half-billion dollars, he said. He said financing can’t be nailed down yet because of highway needs elsewhere that would bar setting aside such a huge sum right now, even divided up over several years.

In remarks recently to a new state panel created to study highway finances, Flowers said the state needs $23.7 billion over the next decade for road improvements. But Flowers said his department is only projected to have $4 billion in revenue over that period.

“We just don’t have the resources to handle a bridge like that, and do all the other things that are involved in a highway system,” he said.

For western Arkansas, the state Highway Commission voted in March to submit a joint application with Missouri for a supplemental grant from federal stimulus money for construction of the Bella Vista bypass. State highway officials said Arkansas would request $225 million for the project and Missouri would request $80 million.

South of I-40, the new I-49 will require a new bridge over the Arkansas River. The new location takes the route across old Fort Chaffee property – perhaps making industrial development of the old military post easier.

“The bridge is one of those things that will be very expensive,” said Rep. John Boozman, R-Ark., whose district includes the northern half of the proposed I-49.

“I would like to take the money that we get and begin laying road from Greenwood south and from Texarkana north,” Boozman said. “At some point, you reach a magic mass that makes it a lot easier to get money.”