GUEST COLUMN : Get on the bus, Gus?
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Will Northwest Arkansas ever have a real bus system ?
I’m sure the people who work hard to provide bus service in the region might get offended by that question. It’s certainly no reflection on the work they do day in and day out to provide a critically needed transportation option, but even they would probably acknowledge that mass transit in Northwest Arkansas lacks, well, mass.
Fayetteville has a bus system operated by the University of Arkansas that attempts to serve the student population, but anyone can use it. It operates from 7 a. m. to 6 p. m. on class days, with reduced levels of service from 6 to 10: 30 p. m. and at all hours during the summer and Christmas / New Year’s break. It serves off-campus areas as far away as the Northwest Arkansas Mall, but its primary purpose is to move around people trying to get to and from campus.
The region’s bus system is Ozark Regional Transit, which operates three daily bus routes in Fayetteville, three in Springdale, one in Bentonville and one in Rogers.
Both systems receive federal subsidies and the UA system understandably has more riders, but Ozark Regional Transit covers far, far more area. Ozark Regional seeks to serve each community based on need, though limited by financial resources, while Razorback Transit maintains its focus on serving UA students primarily, with some community transit needs being met as a by-product.
Phil Pumphrey, executive director of Ozark Regional Transit, is understandably frustrated. He knows gas prices are biting into people’s wallets. He hears people complaining about traffic congestion. He sees mass transit as part of Northwest Arkansas’ solution for the future, but as things stand today, he expects his 2009 budget to be about $ 200, 000 less than his budget was in 2008.
A declining budget at a time when expenses for a bus system are no doubt going up means the impact is even more serious. Pumphrey anticipates cutting bus routes, which seems to be precisely the opposite direction mass transit should be taking.
“ We spend a tremendous amount of fortune on roads and the ironic part is we don’t have enough money to build the roads we want to build, such as the Springdale bypass, the Bella Vista bypass, the feasibility study for the western bypass, the airport bypass, ” Pumphrey said last week. “ It’s kind of amazing, yet we spend $ 700, 000 in local money basically on public transit. ”
Mass transit simply hasn’t been a priority, and our communities in Northwest Arkansas have grown in ways that don’t make development of mass transit any easier. For decades, spreading out has been the preference. Bus systems work best when they’re trying to transport people within and between densely populated areas. The handful of bus routes funded today simply can’t reach a large areas of our sprawling communities.
For a lot of folks, mass transit simply isn’t an option today because getting to or from a bus route is too inconvenient.
“ Unless you live in northwest Fayetteville and you’re going to the university, you don’t have a lot of options, ” Pumphrey said.
Perhaps there’s some hope in the recent creation of the Regional Mobility Authority, a government agency designed to pursue funding for regional transportation projects. But so far, the organizers of that effort have focused attention on the traditional approach: Build more highways. It’s too early to know if or when expansion of public transit will be a priority for the authority’s board.
“ It’s not really a regional mobility unless it has transit in it, in my opinion, ” Pumphrey said. “ Otherwise, you may as well call it the road-building authority, or the toll road authority. I think it could work wonderfully. It has to be part of a balanced transportation effort, that you’re going to do transit and you’re going to do roads. Obviously, roads are going to have a much bigger slice of the pie, but transit right now, it’s almost like we’re starving. If we’re cutting routes, we’re starving. ” Pumphrey estimates a substantial effort to develop mass transit will cost $ 7. 5 million to $ 10 million a year, far short of his current $ 2. 2 million in funding. The fact that there hasn’t been any political pursuit of added transit options frustrates Pumphrey. “ I’ve been working on this for six years. I can’t convince the people who hold the purse strings that this is good for everybody, and these [high ] fuel prices, they’re going to come back. It’s a matter of time, ” Pumphrey said. “ It’s not quite to the point where I think the local politicians have said, ‘ My gosh, we can help the environment, we can help the economy, we can help our citizens. ’ The money they’re spending on fuel is going overseas, $ 700 or $ 800 billion a year, to dictators who want to wipe us [out ] or don’t like us because of our beliefs. We could make some difference, we could make some changes. ” “ The political leadership in the cities and counties won’t set mass transit as a priority unless the public does, ” Pumphrey said. “ What really needs to happen, and what will make the difference, is if the people speak up and say this is a need, and we really need to have this now... This has got to be the public, a cross section, saying this is important to quality of life, this is important to me and my neighbors, let’s do it. ” Will it happen ? As things go, it will probably happen long, long after it should have happened. But as this region grows, the need for mass transit will indeed grow with it. The decision that has to come from local leaders is whether Northwest Arkansas is content with today’s “ safety net” style of transit that seeks to provide only rudimentary service, or whether it wants a true mass transit system that provides a realistic transportation alternative for large numbers of our population. The latter, it’s clear, is the one that will solve some of the problems plaguing us today.
—Greg Harton is executive editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times.
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