ABSTRACT

Providing adequate public transportation, including transportation services for the disadvantaged in Northwest Arkansas is an ongoing challenge. A 1992 report, submitted to the Governor’s Task Force on Public Transportation Issues (1), stated that "transportation still surfaces as one of the top social problems in Arkansas." It also reported lack of transportation for medical services, lack of transportation for work, difficulty traveling for food and retail shopping, and inability to travel from rural areas to major activity centers within the state. Unmet transit needs for the four-county area (Washington, Benton, Carroll and Madison Counties) included those of the elderly, low-income adults, the disabled, and children.

Approximately 9 separate agencies provide public transportation services within the four counties. This project assesses these various agencies to determine service area, fleet size, total ridership, type of service, and sources of funding, as well as any restrictions on the funds. Users of public transportation services were also contacted to assess quality of service and level of service satisfaction. These users consisted of individuals who utilize public transportation services and agencies that contract services on behalf of their constituents. Data were collected through surveys of both the service providers and the users of transportation services. In addition, key municipalities in the study area that contract for services through transportation providers were interviewed to obtain their experience with transit services in the area. The information was used to identify where problems and gaps in service currently exist.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of the Northwest Arkansas Transit Assessment Study was to assess the status of public transportation in Washington, Benton, Carroll and Madison Counties. It was jointly sponsored by the Mack-Blackwell National Rural Transportation Study Center and the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission.

Nationally, it is widely recognized that rural residents who are elderly, children, disabled, or poor are particularly transit dependent. According to the 1990 census, 76 million people nationwide fall into the transit dependent category, and 38 million of them (~50 percent) live in rural areas. Of all rural residents nationwide, 32 percent are classified as transit dependent. Only 30 percent of urban residents are transit dependent. (2)

The 1992 Governor’s Task Force Study (1) identified unmet transit needs for the elderly, low-income adults, the disabled, and children in the four-county area. For example, at the time the 1992 report was published, the unmet transit need in Benton County was one of the highest of any county in the state. Public transit in Benton County was meeting only 25 percent of senior citizen demand, less than 50 percent of disabled need, and just over 50 percent of low-income adult need. Carroll County and Madison Counties had substantial unmet transit needs for children. In Washington County, 28 percent of transit service needs for the elderly were being met, and approximately one-half of disabled adult needs were being met.

Northwest Arkansas has experienced explosive growth in the past decade, which has undoubtedly affected the need for and the status of public transportation. These needs are continuing to go unmet for many of the disadvantaged citizens of Northwest Arkansas. While the conventional wisdom in the transit community is that there are significant unmet needs in this area of the state, conclusive data defining the problem has not been available in the past.

The Northwest Arkansas Transit Assessment Study surveyed users and providers of public transportation to collect the data necessary to better define the extent of the public transportation problem. Each of the providers was surveyed, and information such as service area, type of service (route or demand-based), fleet size and type, total ridership, targeted service group (such as the elderly or children), and source of funding and restrictions was collected. User input was sought to assist in the assessment of quality of service and level of service satisfaction. In addition, key municipalities in the study area that contract for service through transportation providers were interviewed to obtain their experiences.

PROJECT OBJECTIVE

The primary objective of the project was to better quantify public transportation needs in Northwest Arkansas. Currently, there is consensus among transportation providers and users that the needs are significant, but that there is little information available to adequately define the problem. General recommendations for further areas of study are included in the conclusions of the project report, but detailed plans for improvement of service were outside the scope of this project as it was proposed.

METHODOLOGY

Provider Survey
In order to develop a list of transit providers, the project team began with the Arkansas Public Transportation Needs Assessment and Action Plan (1), published in 1992, which contained a listing of many transportation providers in the area. The list did not contain contact personnel or phone numbers. The telephone book supplied a limited amount of phone numbers for the list. The list was then circulated among people in the local transit industry, including the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission (NWARPC), Ozark Regional Transit, the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department (AHTD), and other providers and consultants. With the aid of these individuals the provider list was completed, with contact personnel, addresses, and phone numbers. Table 1 lists those agencies that provide transportation services with their own vehicles. Table 2 lists agencies that require public transportation services, but contract those services through other agencies. Each provider on the list was contacted and provided with a survey form that asked basic questions about each provider. The transit provider survey form (included as Appendix A) was created specifically for this study. To optimize the format, a literature review was conducted to obtain surveys used in the past, and input was sought from the local transit community. The USDOT’s Travel Survey Manual was also used for reference. (3)

Each of the providers was contacted and sent a copy of the provider survey. Most were faxed a copy, but Razorback Transit and Ozark Transit were interviewed. Some persistence was required to get information from some providers. Most were cooperative and were interested in the outcome of this project. Some were less enthusiastic.

Passenger Survey
In order to determine how the various providers were servicing the community the passengers of four different transit providers were surveyed. The companies included Eureka Springs Transit, Ozark Transit, Razorback Transit, the Fayetteville Trolley, and the Elderly Taxi Program. These four operations are currently the major public transportation providers in the northwest Arkansas four-county (Benton, Carroll, Madison, Washington) area. A general description of each follows:

• Elderly Taxi Program – a program developed to provide taxi service to the elderly in Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers, and Bentonville.

• Eureka Springs Transit - a fixed route service for tourists and the general public in Eureka Springs (see Appendix B for route map)

• Fayetteville Trolley - a small fixed route system serving central Fayetteville (see Appendix C for route map)

• Ozark Regional Transit - a demand responsive, zone based service for various transportation disadvantaged groups including the developmentally and physically disabled, elderly, children, and those without an automobile in Benton, Carroll, Madison, and Washington Counties

• Razorback Transit - a fixed route service for university students and the general public in Fayetteville, with a demand-responsive vehicle for disabled riders (see Appendix D for route map)

The surveys were developed to assess the service provided by each of the agencies. The survey forms can be seen in Appendix E. The questions were worded so that the passengers could choose from six available answers; strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree, strongly disagree, or does not apply. Special attention was given to ensure that the questions were easy to understand and that the font was easy to read. As the survey was being finished, copies were once again sent for review by area agencies and then finalized. They were then printed on heavy cardstock so that they could be filled out without the use of a clipboard.

Elderly Taxi Service
The information regarding the "Elderly Taxi Program" was obtained from the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission. This program "is designed to improve the mobility of elderly persons through the issuance of coupons by the City to offset a portion of the taxi fare by the City’s local franchise taxi services". (4)

Eureka Springs Transit
In order to survey Eureka Springs Transit, project team members initially rode the buses along the different routes. After time, we realized that it would be more productive to simply wait at the main bus depot and survey riders as they exit the various buses. This allowed us to sample from every bus from every route, not just one bus from each of the routes.

Fayetteville Trolley
In order to survey the Fayetteville Trolley, project team members rode the trolley and handed out surveys to each passenger. Surveys were collected from the passengers once they were complete. A large portion of the Fayetteville Trolley passengers were elderly and needed to take the survey form home with them in order to fill them out. Those surveys were returned to the driver of the trolley and were picked up at a later date.

Ozark Regional Transit
Working with Ozark Transit personnel, a survey date was chosen and the surveys were printed. For this survey, the drivers were instructed to hand out surveys to the passengers and collect them once the passengers exited the vehicle. However, only certain routes could be surveyed in this manner. Some of Ozark Regional Transit’s passengers were not able to complete the surveys because of developmental disabilities, physical disabilities, or because they were small children. Information regarding routes for these individuals was obtained by surveying the agencies that contract services for these passengers. They filled out the survey according to how they felt their clients were being served. These surveys were collected from directly from the agencies, along with the number of their clients served. The list of agencies includes: Benton County Sunshine School, Adult Development Center, Kids First, Richardson Kids, Ozark Guidance, and Springhouse.

Razorback Transit
Razorback transit was surveyed twice. The first survey was conducted near the end of the 1999 summer term and was carried out in the same manner as the Ozark Transit survey. The survey forms were given to the bus drivers to hand out to the riders. The response was excellent on a couple of routes, but other routes had an extremely low return. Due to the great variation in the response rate, another survey needed to be conducted. It was also desirable to re-survey Razorback Transit because the routes changed between the summer and fall semesters. The survey was redone in the fall semester of 1999. Individuals working for the project team handed out surveys. Doing this allowed us to make sure that all of the routes were compared equally.

Government Survey
Municipalities in the study area were another information source. Several key municipalities contract transit services for the transit dependent in their communities. Representatives of the mayor’s offices in Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers, and Bentonville were contacted in late August and early September of 1999 and interviewed by phone to obtain their perceptions of transit services.

Needs Analysis
Accurately and precisely determining to what extent these or any transit operations meet the need for public transit in a given area, or determining what needs are still unmet, can be difficult if not impossible. However, these needs have been approximated in studies of other locales, based on socioeconomic indicators obtained from the decennial U.S. Census.

Number and Location of Transportation Disadvantaged Persons
Those populations considered to be potentially transportation disadvantaged and listed in the Census included:

senior citizens

children

the disabled

the poor (those living in households with incomes below the poverty line), and

those living in households reporting no automobile owned

Since the last general census was conducted almost a decade ago (i.e., 1990), available data for the fast-growing northwest Arkansas area are obviously somewhat dated. This limitation is partly overcome by the existence of special censuses made in the mid-1990s for parts of the four-county area. The data reported in the special census are not as extensive as is the data in the decennial census. Appendix F contains certain pertinent values from the 1990 and subsequent special censuses, by county, by census tract, and by municipality. These data reflect responses individuals gave to the census-taker; for instance, who responded "yes" to "Do you consider yourself to be transportation disabled?"

Table 3 lists the four county census tracts, and to the right a column entry is made if the tract exhibits an attribute that is an indicator of "more likely to need public transit service," compared to other census tracts in the four-county area. For instance, Benton County tract 202.01 has elevated percentages of both "mobility-disabled population 65 and over" and "occupied households with 0 vehicles". The indicator percentages are based on the 1990 census. For the entire four-county area, this table serves to highlight those areas which are more likely to have higher levels of transportation disadvantaged persons.

Based on 1990 Census data, the census tracts listed in Table 4 had elevated indicators in at least three of the five categories.

Overall, the entire city of Fayetteville ranked in three of the five categories. It is not known to what extent the presence of the large university student population contributes to this. Appendixes G through J are maps of each of the four counties, with census tract boundaries outlined. County totals of those in transportation disadvantaged groups are presented in Table 5.

Adjusted Number of Transportation Disadvantaged
When employing census data to estimate the number of persons or households having the attributes associated with "transportation disadvantaged", a problem arises. It is likely that some households or individuals fall into more than one of these categories. So if the number of persons in each category were simply added, the total would include some "double" (or multiple) counting, and overestimate the total number of transportation disadvantaged persons. Therefore, an adjustment to the raw total is in order.

Transportation Disadvantaged Senior Citizens. The number of those 65 and over was taken directly from the Census data. Under the Older Americans Act, all those 65 and over are eligible for transportation services, even if they are not disabled or below the poverty level (1). Using information from the 1992 state study, about 30% of the elderly in the northwest Arkansas counties are either disabled, below the poverty level, or both. Column 3 in Table 6 presents estimated numbers of those over 64 whose income or mobility disability makes them transportation disadvantaged.

Transportation Disadvantaged Disabled Demand (excluding Seniors). The number of transportation disabled was taken directly from the 1990 Census. For Bentonville-Rogers, Washington county, and Fayetteville-Springdale, the values were inflated at a rate less than the actual population growth shown in the 1995-1996 Special Census, since the growth of some of these groups was slightly less than the general population growth. These numbers are in column 4 of Table 6.

Transportation Disadvantaged Low-Income (excluding Seniors, Disabled). From the 1990 Census (showing 1989 data), the percentages of those in the16-64 age range and also below poverty were roughly 7% in Benton County, 12% in Carroll and Washington Counties, and 15% in Madison County. The numbers of persons below the poverty level, excluding those over 64 and the disabled, were estimated by taking the number of persons in the age group, then multiplying by 10% for adults and 10% for children. These percentages are slightly less than to those that had been applied to northwest Arkansas in the 1992 statewide study.

NOTES:
* indicates 1995-1996 Special Census data
b indicates 1990 data multiplied by 1.32 growth factor
c indicates 1990 data multiplied by 1.20 growth factor
65+over and Disabled/Below Poverty estimated at 30% of total 65+over
Adult Below Poverty estimated at 10% of 16-64
Under 17 Below Poverty estimated at 10% of 0-16

Trip-Making Rates
To estimate a demand for public transit services, based on the preceding socioeconomic indicators, the 1992 Arkansas Public Transportation Needs Assessment and Action Plan (1) was consulted. This report, sponsored by the Governor’s Task Force on Public Transportation Issues, contains the trip rates per year listed in Table 7. For instance, the annual number of transit trips by senior citizens (those 65 and over) in Benton County was 2.0. This value was calculated by dividing the reported number of passenger trips made by seniors by the number of senior citizens (35,521/17,438=2.0) estimated to reside in Benton County at that time.