The city of Fayetteville is working with Ozark Regional Transit and Razorback Transit to roll out several improvements to the city’s free, public bus network, including expanding routes and increasing service.
Ozarks at Large’s Sophia Nourani spoke with individuals, stakeholders and grassroots organization Fayetteville Strong about the significance of accessibility to public transit in a growing region like Northwest Arkansas.
Fayetteville Strong is a small, volunteer-run organization made up of people who care about place, according to Clark Eckels, the group’s secretary and treasurer.
“We care about housing affordability, transportation, we want to see safer streets. We also want to see productive streets, so we want to see the city making investments, and seeing more infill development, using existing infrastructure instead of sprawling out and out- which is also a barrier to having good transit.”
This summer, the group began to place wooden benches at certain Ozark Regional Transit and Razorback transit stops around the city, something that project leader and member of Fayetteville Strong Rebecca Clark says she conceptualized while sitting on the ground waiting for a bus to come.
“So this past year, I was working on my capstone project for my occupational therapy degree, and I completed that project on accessible transportation for people with disabilities. So I was using the bus more. And I noticed as I was sitting on the ground waiting for a stop that I had this really deep sense of uselessness.
“And I realized it was because I was sitting on the ground and in the dirt, and I feel like I'm a pretty fortunate and privileged person. And I was able to kind of mentally pull myself out of that worthless state of mind. But I thought about all the people that, you know, might be struggling more or that might have more issues that they have going on. And I just felt like if we can get people off the ground while they're waiting for the bus, that's just a small act of kindness that we can do for people here in Northwest Arkansas. And also promoting the bus, too.”
Stockton Pyle is originally from Houston and a graduate of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas. Stockton worked with Fayetteville Strong on their bench project and individually on other projects like it. He says he began envisioning a similar approach to public transit after studying abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark and seeing, what he calls, a city you want to live in, not one you have to live in.
“But a city that wanted you to live in it. A city that you could enjoy being in, that you could enjoy getting around in, that it wasn't a chore to exist in. Which a lot of American cities are, by design, a pain to be a pedestrian in. So once I had come back to the United States, I saw pretty glaring issues even in Fayetteville about how we treat our pedestrians.
“I happen to live next door to a bus stop, I can see it from my front door. That was my first step, make a bench for this bus stop. That is, um, nothing more than a concrete pad at this point… And it just kind of kept going from there. I see a need. I have the skills to fill it and I fill it, just as my way of giving back a little piece of urban guerrilla urbanism is what I've been calling it.”
Guerrilla Urbanism, or tactical urbanism, is a term describing an unconventional, do-it-yourself approach to redefining public spaces. Stockton and Fayetteville Strong’s focus on accessibility to public transit aligns with a grant-funded effort from the city of Fayetteville to improve and install bus shelters across the city. Fayetteville Environmental Director Peter Nierengarten says these efforts are going a long way.
“Right now we're working to add 25 new bus shelters across transit stops in the city of Fayetteville. That will provide that enhanced access to getting on and off the bus. We were fortunate enough to be awarded a $203,000 grant from the Walton Family Foundation that required matching funds. The city provided part of the matching funds, as did Razorback Transit and Ozark Regional Transit to help fund those investments. So the purchase of the shelters, the construction of the concrete pad adjacent sidewalk improvements, right of way acquisition, easement acquisition. There's a number of elements that go into putting those transit shelters in place.”
Peter says an increase in city spending towards public transit has helped bring more improvements to the system, like adding more buses and expanding running hours.
“One of the reasons we were able to make such significant improvement in the amount of transit service in Fayetteville this year is because the city council made a significant investment in additional transit funding last year. So for the 2026 budget, Mayor Rawn recommended a 40% increase in transit operations funding. That was an additional $504,000 in transit service. And so that money is what's being used now.
“Starting at the beginning of May, we worked with Ozark Regional Transit to double the frequency of the buses that are traversing up and down College Avenue. That's Route 10 from downtown Fayetteville to the mall area. So now we have bus service every half hour on College Avenue instead of every hour. And as a result of that increase in frequency of those buses, we've already seen in the first month, 12 ½% increase in ridership on route ten on College Avenue. And then beginning on Saturday, August 1, that service is going to change from being provided by Ozark Regional Transit to being provided by Razorback Transit. And so the old Route 10 is going to become the new Route 27 for Razorback Transit. And there'll be further improvements to the service along College Avenue, and those improvements include the addition of Saturday service. So one bus every half hour weekdays and Saturday, again starting on August 1, and then the hours of service are going to extend further into the evening. So the last bus service will wrap up during peak service at 11:30 p.m.
“Also on August 1, we'll be investing in additional transit frequency on Route 20, which is an Ozark regional transit route that runs in South Fayetteville. So right now the Route 20 runs every once an hour, and starting on August 1, that bus service will begin running every half hour in South Fayetteville on Route 20.”
Peter says the city welcomes efforts like those from Fayetteville Strong to support and uplift Fayetteville’s public transit system. The city is partnering with the group to help deploy benches to transit spots that need it most.
“We're really, really excited to partner with Fayetteville Strong and fortunate to have an organization with such a passion for transit in Fayetteville that we can partner with on this initiative. I believe the assessment is that there's somewhere close to 260 transit stops all across the city of Fayetteville. They have varying levels of service associated with them. I mentioned the 25 new shelters, those will be when those are completed, those will be fully accessible transit stops, but we'll still have a number of stops that don't have necessary improvements at them.
“So this interim solution that Fayetteville Strong has come up with to deploy simple benches at some of these locations that are a little bit more difficult to get shelters installed at, that may take longer to get shelters at, as an interim solution, at least providing folks with a place to sit down while they're waiting on the bus is a significant step forward and improvement. And as I said, we're really appreciative of their work and excited to partner with them on getting these benches deployed across the city.”
According to a report last year from the U.S. Census Bureau, Northwest Arkansas ranked in the top 10 of U.S. metro areas with the highest population percentage growth in the country. As the region, and Fayetteville grows, Stockton Pyle says public transit and accessibility will be an essential part of the conversation.
“I think that growth and expansion, although they are the same word, there's very much a conversation to be had about do we want to expand or do we want to meet our demands to grow with the city? Because being from Houston, it was never a question of expansion because we would just do it anyways. You could drive from one end of Houston to the other end of Houston, and it would take you two hours. Everything was a 30 minute drive. Everything was far apart. There's no interconnectivity save for I-10. Every neighborhood is its own island, essentially. And if you want to get around, you're out of luck.
So I think that these points of accessibility and… Meaningfulness, I suppose is not the word, but just being intentioned about how we respond to our dilemmas that we're facing because they're very real issues. But I think that Fayetteville… Unfortunately cannot keep up with the demand. So any way we can remedy our issues needs to be either bottom up or really well thought out, but well thought out things can't often happen quickly.”
To learn more about Fayetteville Strong and their work, you can visit their website.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
