The Office for Sustainability at the University of Arkansas is seeking responses to its annual commuter survey. The data collected is useful to better serve the growing campus community, which includes faculty and staff in addition to the student body, on ways to incorporate public transit and active transportation.
Emma Armendariz: Every single year that I've seen, I think we have at least 80% of respondents say that it's very important for the U of A to reduce its environmental impact, which isn't directly transportation related whenever you look at it. But I think about, like the EPA says, that the largest chunk of greenhouse gases in the U.S. comes from transportation. So in my role, I like to kind of connect those dots for people and say, like, hey, you said it's really important that we reduce our environmental impact. Here's a great way to do it. So I kind of expect that to stay the same. Like I'm really happy to see that that is on people's minds.
One thing that I would expect to see different—Maple Street is a great example. So we are investing a lot in facilities to support active transportation and alternative transportation in general. We have a parking study happening now. We have a transportation study happening now. We are almost halfway through construction of Maple Street. So we're really again using the responses from previous years and saying, hey, we made these changes that you wanted. You should give them a try now and see how they suit your needs. So hopefully as we continue to invest in those new programs and infrastructure and education, we'll see a shift from people driving alone and more people using active and alternative transportation.
Matthew Moore: What I hear from you are essentially two things that are a big part of your role. One is education, letting people know that, like, hey, here are the things that impact the changes that you want to make. And then second is empowering people to make those changes. Now that you have this education, you have the power and the authority and the ability to make those changes. Is one side of that coin harder than the other?
Emma Armendariz: Ooh, that's a really good question. I think empowering is, like, for me it feels really good to work with an individual or a small group of people and give those people the tools to be successful in their own efforts. But at the same time, like when you look at the U of A as a whole, it moves the needle very, very slowly. So I don't know if it's necessarily harder, but it's maybe not as quick of a payout. I guess you could say maybe not as satisfying. Yeah. Like it's satisfying to me because I get to see like the immediate action of my work. But yeah, when we look at, like, the campus is growing year after year and me alone working with small groups of people at a time, it's not really making the impact that we're needing to be sustainable as a campus.
But I mean, I really love the empowerment side of things because, I mean, like I just said, you see someone who feels like, for example, driving is maybe their only option. They've grown up driving. They haven't really tried any public transportation or active transportation. And just being able to kind of like hold their hand through the process and say, like, you can do this. It's not as scary as you think. It feels really good and it feels really rewarding. And I think specifically about, like, maybe this makes their day a little bit easier and maybe they will take this experience and feel motivated to do the same for someone else.
Matthew Moore: One data point that you have on your website is the drop in commuters driving alone to campus. We look at results from the 2015 survey—60% of students or people who do work on campus, right? This also includes faculty and staff. About 60% were driving alone to campus. It was lowered to 46% in the 2024 survey. So a pretty significant drop. But we're still looking at just under half of the campus community is still driving alone to campus. How do you hope to see that drop even lower?
Emma Armendariz: When I think about the people who are driving alone to campus, I tend to kind of clump them depending on, like, their motivation. So the first clump is the people—we see a lot of people who say, like, I just live way too far away. Like I can't use alternative transportation and it doesn't make sense. So those people I understand. Like if you live in Bella Vista, the bus doesn't go all the way up there. It maybe doesn't make sense to bike. That clump is the one that I'm still kind of trying to figure out how to reach. They're definitely a challenging one.
But then some of the other clumps—like for example, we have the people who have grown up driving everywhere, coming back to this theme of, like, you don't know any different. Maybe they have driven everywhere. They've never tried public transit. They don't feel like they are, for example, fit enough to bike or walk everywhere. That clump is way more accessible for my position because I can show them, like, hey, I've been in your shoes. I too had this mindset. Here are some of the steps I took to kind of overcome that and try something different. And I feel like that kind of goes back to the hand-holding, where it's like, you don't know until you know, and sometimes you just got to help people know.
I try to approach that with a very open-minded kind of understanding of, like, people have all different needs that you could never, never really know about. Like someone could be driving half a mile to get to campus because they feel like that's their only option. And it's not necessarily my job to say, like, hey, you shouldn't be doing this. It's my job to say, hey, you have other options if you want to explore them. And when there's a will, there's a way. So we're here to help you find the way.
And then the last section is—well, I guess they kind of overlap a little bit—but kind of like perceived necessity. So maybe you have kids or you feel like you can't accomplish, like, getting to meetings or getting to classes on foot or by bike or by bus, whatever it might be. And you feel like you need to have this car. Maybe you're aware of these other modes, but you just don't really see that they can serve your needs. So that group is my favorite, because I love to pull examples of people on campus and be like, hey, you should connect with this person because they have a lot of similar circumstances. Exactly. Maybe you can use them as a resource and kind of like act as a mentor.
One person that I love to connect people to is Jen Campbell. She's a professor on campus, and she will always roll up to our campus events with her two kids in her little bike basket. It's like a cargo bike. So she's a great example of, like, she really was tired of driving to campus, and maybe she just wanted to be on a bike, and she found a way to fit her circumstances into this alternative transportation and make it work with her life and its demands. So I think, again, going back to that kind of connection to other people on campus and showing others that it's possible and it is scary at first, but you're not alone. And if you want to pursue something like this, like you have the support here. You just have to be open to it.
As we see more people biking, walking, using transit, it's going to become a lot more normal. And it'll also tell the U of A that, like, oh, people like these things. People want to use these things. We should continue to invest our time and our energy and our resources into making them even better. So I think it definitely moves the needle year after year as far as how many people are open to those and how many people are using those versus driving alone.
Matthew Moore: It's another year of record enrollment here at the university. You can only build so many parking lots in Fayetteville. How do you best convey to the campus community—maybe let's think specifically about non-students here, so faculty and staff—how do you best convey to them that it's in their best interest to consider ways other than driving alone to campus to park?
Emma Armendariz: Yes. So when I think about that specific challenge, I try to relate the conversation to something that's important to that individual or that group of people. Some people, again, going back to, like, necessity, they have to use one mode of transportation or another. For some people it's, like, a financial motivation. So for example, faculty and staff—it's kind of strange that they're paying to park on campus at the place where they work. So that is a good kind of in where I can say, like, hey, if you bike or walk, it's free.
And again, kind of being considerate of their specific situation. So like if they live far away, they want to look professional, maybe they can't walk the whole way. But we can help them explore options where it's like, you can bike to this bus stop, hop on the bus and then bike to your office. Some sort of multi-modal transportation.
People tend to take the path of least resistance, especially students. So like if we make it super easy for students to use the bus or walk or bike, then that's what they're going to lean towards. Right now it's really easy for them to drive. I mean, if you're a freshman, you can park right outside your dorm and it might be a little expensive. But again, if the cost isn't a big concern to you, then I think it's usually worth it. So we definitely try to take the perspective of, like, how can we help these students develop healthy habits from day one, from, like, before they even get to campus?
Faculty and staff are a little different because they're here often. They're here for more than four years. So I feel like investing in faculty and staff, even though they're a smaller group on campus, there's not as many of them as there are students. It goes a long way and they have a direct influence on everyone else they interact with. We have one professor who is in our Bike Advocacy Council, and he's fantastic about telling his students, like, here are ways that you can feasibly and conveniently use active transportation to meet your needs on campus. So if we can invest in one faculty member and empower them—going back to empowerment—if we can empower them to use these alternative modes, then we can have them empower everyone else to do the same.
Matthew Moore: How do you think about your work in connection with people who are differently abled or disabled? Perhaps active transportation looks different for them. How do you feel motivated and compelled to encourage a community like that to think about transportation?
Emma Armendariz: That's a really good question. And with that question, I think to my work with the School of Art. I've been working with them a lot lately to kind of help navigate their new campus because they're in a remote location. And speaking with those students, I—of course, active transportation, I'm always promoting active transportation. And they have a really nice setup there right along the trail, they're right along the Greenway. So it's kind of like prime opportunity to use active transportation.
But when I spoke with them, they gave me a lot of different perspective about, like, physical abilities. So like we went into ADA accessibility conversations. And it just gave me this perspective of, like, even though these people have this perfect situation, it's again not always going to work for them, even if they want to use it.
And this kind of goes back to the conversation of, like, if you are willing to bike or walk just one day a week, it'll make transportation so much easier for everyone else, especially when we think about, like, people who maybe have different physical abilities. Maybe they aren't feeling well that day and they want to walk, but they can only walk a little bit. That little strip of parking on the back of School of Art, like, that's essential for them to be able to access work or class. So by leaving that there for them, and me as an able-bodied person, kind of taking the initiative to ensure that those resources are available to them is big. And sometimes it means the difference between being able to get to work or class.
So I do try to approach all of those conversations with sensitivity. And I would say curiosity, because sometimes people who maybe have ADA accommodations, like, they want to participate in these things, but they just need help finding the tools that make it possible for them to do so. Whereas other people, they are saying, no, I have enough challenges day to day. Like I really just need something that's consistent and reliable, and active transportation isn't always that for them. As much as I would love for it to be, it's just not always feasible to meet their day-to-day needs. So that's when I say, like, okay, I get that. Like, tell me what it is you need so we can better accommodate that.
And the funny thing is that, like, a lot of the projects that we look at to better accommodate bikes, for example, also directly accommodate people in wheelchairs or people who are pushing a stroller or whatever, anything related to mobility. Like they are connected in the sense that what's better for one person is better for this whole other group of people.
Matthew Moore: Emma Armendariz is the active transportation director at the University of Arkansas. She joined me yesterday in the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio Two.
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