Usable transit system takes time, wide-ranging cooperation, experts say
Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, April 21, 2018
Creating a useful, popular transit system in Northwest Arkansas will take patience and the joined efforts of the businesses, schools and community groups that stand to benefit, two outside experts told local residents and officials this week.
The two said their groups succeeded in getting public support and tax revenue for the multimillion-dollar improvements by focusing on local problems to relieve, whether it was congestion around Raleigh or difficulty reaching jobs in the nine-county Indianapolis region.
Indianapolis and North Carolina's Raleigh-Durham region are in the middle of building and reforming their public bus networks after years of study and referendum campaigns, said Mark Fisher, chief policy officer for the Indy Chamber, and Joe Milazzo, director of North Carolina's Regional Transportation Alliance. Their buses come to stops every 15 minutes and travel along dense and busy corridors.
Reliable and frequent transit can help on those fronts and more, they said. It can help low-income families afford transportation to work and school. It can help senior citizens get to the grocery store without having to move out of their homes. It can help businesses employing far-flung workers or attract young professionals. It can appeal to environmental groups and people tired of rush hour.
All of this potential can grow public support among groups that otherwise might never work together, Fisher said.
"The chamber and labor coming together, old people and young people coming together," he told a crowd of around 75 people Thursday evening in Rogers. "To do this really, really well, you have to build coalitions."
Fisher and Milazzo spoke at the third of four planned talks on improving mobility in a growing region, a series organized by the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission and Walton Family Foundation.
Milazzo said creating such a system the right way took time. The Raleigh area includes three major hubs: Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. Passing sales tax votes in all three took five years, with none in the same year.
The transportation alliance also tested out pieces of the system gradually here and there, such as with a program that runs buses on highway shoulders during peak congestion. Pushing too hard for a new route or system can lead to failures or intense public opposition that spoils the entire project, Milazzo said.
"Being regional does not require doing everything together at the same time," he said.
Transit can't be created in isolation, Milazzo added. It needs adequate roads, highways, sidewalks and other transportation infrastructure.
The nonprofit Northwest Arkansas Council, which includes area business and civic leaders, has helped lead past regional projects such as the creation of the regional airport in Bentonville. Spokesman Rob Smith said the group would be interested in taking part in a similar effort around transit and praised Milazzo's and Fisher's advice.
"They talked about job access, and they talked about quality of life," Smith said. "We absolutely want to be in the middle of that conversation."