Interstate 30 (I-30): Fort Worth to Little Rock Route and Safety Data

How long is I-30?

The FHWA Route Log, current to January 2026, credits I-30 with 367.28 miles: 224.30 in Texas and 142.98 in Arkansas. Wikipedia prints 366.76 miles and Interstate Guide 368.11, so the three published totals sit within a mile and a half of one another.

The Route Log notes no stretch where I-30 shares pavement with another Interstate, so nothing has to be added back, and the state crash rates below divide by these same row figures. I-30 does carry US highways for long distances. US 67 rides with it from downtown Dallas to just past Sulphur Springs, US 59 joins it at Texarkana, and US 70 and US 67 join it near Benton and ride along into Little Rock. Among the seven Interstates numbered in tens, the next shortest after I-30 is I-20, at 1,409.82 Route Log miles.

Where I-30 starts and ends

The western end is a wye interchange with I-20 in Parker County near Aledo, on the rural west side of Fort Worth. Mile zero is there. The eastern end is in North Little Rock, Arkansas, at an interchange with I-40, US 65, US 67, US 167 and Arkansas 107.

Heading east, I-30 passes downtown Fort Worth and follows the old Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike through Arlington and Grand Prairie. It crosses the Trinity River to downtown Dallas, heads out through Mesquite and Rockwall, and continues past Greenville, Sulphur Springs and Mount Pleasant to Texarkana and the Arkansas line. In Arkansas it serves Hope, Arkadelphia, Malvern and Benton, then crosses the Arkansas River from Little Rock into North Little Rock.

Interstate junctions along I-30

The list reads west to east, from I-20 at the Parker County split to I-40 in North Little Rock. I-35 comes up twice: I-30 meets the I-35W branch in Fort Worth and the I-35E branch at the Mixmaster outside downtown Dallas. The Metroplex stretch between those two interchanges is the Tom Landry Freeway, a name it got in October 2001. I-45 is 2.3 miles past the Mixmaster, at the far end of the downtown Canyon, and I-49 crosses at Texarkana.

Fatal crashes on I-30

From 2020 to 2024, crashes on I-30 killed 364 people, about 73 a year. Deaths climbed from 67 in 2020 to 89 in 2021, the worst year, then fell to 77 and 63 before rising to 68 in 2024. Spread over the route's length, that comes to 19.8 deaths per 100 route miles a year, roughly double the Interstate average of 9.5. Of 56 ranked routes, only I-45 and I-4 had higher rates.

Texas recorded 247 of the deaths, a rate of 22.0. Arkansas was lower at 16.4, though still well above the network figure. Dallas County, with 116 deaths, accounts for almost a third of the route total, and Tarrant County had 54. The Arkansas counties with the most were Pulaski at 31 and Hot Spring at 28. Hunt County, Texas, completes the top five with 23.

Counties with the most I-30 crash deaths

Bridges on I-30

I-30's main line rides on 472 bridges in the 2025 National Bridge Inventory: 304 in Texas and 168 in Arkansas. Eleven rate Poor, about 2 percent, and seven of those are in Arkansas even though the state has fewer bridges on the route. Texas has four. Fair is the most common rating, with 328 bridges, and 133 rate Good. Half the bridges were built in 1966 or earlier.

I-30 crosses the Trinity River in Dallas on the Margaret McDermott Bridge. At the Arkansas end, ARDOT's 30 Crossing project put a new bridge over the Arkansas River between Little Rock and North Little Rock, widened the road and rebuilt the interchanges at I-40 and I-630. ARDOT awarded it to Kiewit-Massman in 2019 as the first design-build project in the state and held a ribbon-cutting for the finished work on December 3, 2024.

Tolls on I-30

FHWA's toll inventory, dated January 1, 2023, has one entry for I-30: the IH-30 Express managed lanes, which TxDOT runs from west of SH 161 to east of Sylvan Avenue in Dallas. FHWA lists the facility at 12.45 miles, a length it gives for the facility as a whole that may not match the tolled distance on I-30 exactly. TxDOT has planned to extend these TEXpress Lanes west to Center Street in Arlington, for about 18.7 miles in all. The express lanes are optional, so a driver can go from Fort Worth to North Little Rock without paying a toll. Wikipedia also describes an HOV lane in Dallas, which it says the East Corridor rebuild will replace, between downtown and Loop 12, which is not on FHWA's toll list. Arkansas has no tolled facility on I-30, and our sources show no new toll lanes in either state since that inventory.

I-30 auxiliary routes

Three spurs carry I-30 numbers in our data, all in central Arkansas. I-430 is the 13.75-mile western bypass of Little Rock, I-630 is a 7.87-mile route within Little Rock, and I-530 runs 46.64 miles toward Pine Bluff. Wikipedia also lists I-440 in Little Rock and I-369, whose northern end is at I-30 in Texarkana, but our data does not file either one under I-30. An I-130 was proposed and never signed, and Wikipedia says that corridor is now part of I-49.

How a Texas toll road became I-30

The oldest part of I-30 is the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike, which Interstate Guide calls the first toll road in Texas. Work began in the mid-1950s (1954 per Interstate Guide, 1955 per Wikipedia), and the roughly 30-mile road opened to traffic on August 27, 1957, at a cost of $59 million, with a formal opening on September 5. Its bonds were paid off at the end of 1977, and the tollbooths came down during the first week of 1978.

The I-30 designation dates to August 14, 1957, but the route's western end was first in the Dallas area, at US 80 near Mesquite. I-20 used the turnpike until 1977, when it moved to a new line through southern Fort Worth, Arlington and Grand Prairie, and I-30 took over the old route west to the split near Aledo. Texas approved a 240-mile I-30 in 1962 and finished the Fort Worth section in 1964. Most of the route was open by 1965, and the last piece, 40 rural miles between Mount Pleasant and New Boston, opened in 1971.

Rebuilding has gone on at both ends since. Arkansas finished widening the stretch from Congo Road to Geyer Springs Road in March 2006 and completed 30 Crossing in 2024. In Dallas, TxDOT started the $888 million Canyon project in January 2026, rebuilding 2.3 miles between I-35E and I-45 and widening the main lanes from six to 12, with Balfour Beatty as the contractor and completion expected in 2031. That work is behind the full weekend closures downtown, including one in late October 2026. East of Dallas, Wikipedia lists a widening from six to eight lanes between Garland and the Rockwall-Hunt county line, due by the end of 2027.

I-30 traffic and road conditions

When people look up I-30 today, they usually want to know about a wreck or a closure, and the Canyon rebuild in downtown Dallas means some weekends bring planned full closures. Texas and Arkansas each post current conditions on their own traveler sites, linked below from west to east.

I-30 questions