Earlier this month, the city of Springdale received a $5.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation as part of their Safe Streets and Roads for All program. Tristan Hill is the active transportation coordinator for the city, and as he points out, this funding will not actually be going to streets or roads.
The following transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Tristan Hill: We're using it for a trail. It's for the final phase of Dean's trail. It's been, this one's been in construction for a few years, it's been done in phases over the course of the last several. This last phase is going to connect from Don Tyson Parkway in Springdale down to the Lake Fayetteville Loop right near the Botanical Gardens. It's going to create a new loop to on that southeast corner of the city. It's going to be an alternate route for the Razorback Greenway. It's going to open up a lot of opportunities for people that haven’t had access to the trails in the past.
Matthew Moore: For folks who may not be familiar with that stretch of the Razorback Greenway specifically, it can be a little anxiety inducing because you are either riding on a sidewalk next to the road or you're on the road itself through that stretch of the Greenway. What is your hope with maybe this will invite some folks who might be a little more trepidatious towards riding because it's not on the road anymore. It's an alternative to being on the road right there.
Hill: Definitely. The Razorback Greenway is a wonderful amenity, and we're blessed to have it in northwest Arkansas. That section is its shared street. You have those little plastic bollards and that's really all that divides you from the cars that are flying by right next to you. Some people don't mind that. Some more experienced riders. Not everybody's comfortable with that. So, Dean's Trail is going to offer an alternate route for people to get into Springdale from Lake Fayetteville without having to take some of those more uncomfortable sections. It's kind of a design theory that we use in developing trails. You design for all ages and abilities. When the Razorback Greenway was built, that was put in the road right of way because that's what was available at the time. But now, as trails have expanded in northwest Arkansas, more people are open to selling or even donating easements. We have more options for where we can build that we didn't necessarily have in 2014-2015. So Dean's Trail is going to be completely off-road, separated from cars. It will have a crossing at Highway 265, a crossover, but it's going to be at bridge. It's going to be an overpass. So you won't have to cross a busy highway right there. And I think it's just going to be a lot more comfortable for folks who might not be as confident on a bike or might be trying it out for the first time. That kind of thing.
Moore: When the City of Springdale is looking to apply for a grant for this sort of work, give us a little behind the scenes of how you make the decision to not only seek grant funding, but to seek grant funding for alternative transportation.
Hill: The city has a master trails plan, which is kind of just like an overarching wish list of everywhere in the city that we would like to connect. So, we take a look at that in what's feasible. It takes a lot of design work before you're ready to get to construction. It's usually a year or two of design typically, so we look at those routes. Some of them are based on population, the amount of people that it serves. Some of them are based on locations, whether it connects you to Walmart or employers, places that people need to get to. We take all those into consideration when kind of pick the top ones, the top priorities. And then we're always on the lookout for grant opportunities. The federal government puts out a lot of notifications about grant opportunities. That's how we were made aware of safe streets.
Moore: Some people might look at funding going towards trails and say, shouldn't that be like an ancillary thing? As someone who thinks about active transportation all the time, imagine you would probably disagree with that idea.
Hill: I don't necessarily see it as ancillary as much as I see it as complementary, right? I mean, cars are built into American culture. You're never going to completely remove everyone from the streets in their cars. And that's not necessarily even the goal I don't think. We want active transportation infrastructure to exist and be suitable for the people who want to use it or might not otherwise have had the option to use it. You know, it inspires a lot of people to get out if they can go and ride safely on a separated trail. And I mean, with northwest Arkansas growing as quickly as it is, you're going to see more people and more cars out on the streets. And if we can do something to kind of alleviate that, give people the option to take a bike or to walk, we definitely want to do that because it makes life liberty easier for everybody.
Moore: You talk about how part of the mindset is to make these trails available to all ages and all abilities. Can you talk more about the thought process behind the all ages and all abilities element of it? Because often we associate trails with active people who are very able-bodied and very exercise minded. But that's may not be the case for your intended audience for this.
Hill: Yeah, I mean, we definitely have a great cycling community here in northwest Arkansas, people who do love to get out and do it for recreation and fitness. And, you know, we're grateful to have those people and their support. But if this is going to be used for transportation infrastructure, then you have to look at more than just the people who can ride 30 miles an hour along the cars. We're designing with ADA accessibility for wheelchairs or adaptive bicycles, like the hand pump bicycles, things like that that offer people more accessibility to this infrastructure that they previously haven't had access to. As we're finding ways to get separated from the streets, it just makes it more comfortable.
All ages and abilities also include children, right? I mean, the amount of children we have in Springdale that ride their bikes to school, they have to be taken into account too. Older folks that may want to be able to walk places or may not be able to drive like they used to. That's a group that we're on lookout for as well. We want to just make these usable for pretty much everybody who wants to use them at the end of the day.
Moore: I'm thinking about how there's an elementary school in this part of Springdale as well. I imagine that there are people or there have been people who want to be able to walk with their kids to school, want to be able to have their kids walk to school safely to and from home that maybe didn't have the option to before this.
Hill: The school districts all across northwest Arkansas, but specifically Springdale, facing bus driver shortages. We've been dealing this with this for a long time. And Springdale school district has a policy that within a certain radius of the schools, they don't actually do bus pickups. So, there are these neighborhoods full of kids that maybe a little bit too far to comfortably walk as it is, but also can't take the bus. And so that's a big consideration. It makes it easier for people to get their kids to and from school for sure.
Moore: I also think about a lot of times when I imagine the kind of people who ride bikes, they look like you and me. They're straight white guys who have the income and the ability to get a nice bicycle and ride it to and from wherever we want to. Springdale is a majority minority school district. I imagine a thought behind this sort of work too is thinking about folks who we don't necessarily associate with trails.
Hill: That's actually part of that Safe Streets and Roads for all grant programs. They prioritize projects that are within historically disadvantaged census tracts. And disadvantaged means a whole host of things to the federal government. Typically, higher minority communities, higher rates of households that don't have automobiles. That's a consideration in Springdale in particular. I can't remember the exact percentage, but it's a high percentage of households in the city that don't have automobiles for transportation at all. These are the kind of people that we want to keep in mind because we want them to be able to use this infrastructure for transportation.
Moore: When we look 10 years from now at the work that's been done, the final leg of this has been completed. And you're going out walking yourself, looking at the trail, looking at the people who are using it. What do you hope to see?
Hill: I hope to see a cross-section of northwest Arkansas, right? I mean, we've got an incredibly diverse population that's becoming even more so by the day. You know, we're one of the more inclusive and progressive areas in the state of Arkansas, in particular. And I just I hope that the user base of the trails will reflect that. I hope that we're not creating barriers for anybody that wants access to this infrastructure because historically, I mean, you're exactly right. It's been the guys like you and me who like to put on their spandex, and they like to go 30 miles per hour. And you know, that's great. There's a place for those people too, but that's not the majority here in Northwest Arkansas. And we want to represent everybody.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. The authoritative record of KUAF programming is the audio record.
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