Rock Region Metro wants to start early in informing and engaging elected officials, its customers and the general public about bus route modifications it will be able to make after voters defeated a transit-tax proposal in a March 1 election.
On meeting with relevant parties, "our plan will be for early and often," Jarod Varner, Rock Region Metro's executive director, told a strategic planning committee of Rock Region's board of directors on Wednesday.
The committee met for the first time since the tax defeat to go over a staff-prepared timeline for the planning process and implementation and to provide its input on how to proceed. During the route analysis, Varner said, the agency would also review passenger fares.
Board approval of a plan is to come in August, according to the timeline. Implementation of any route modifications would be in October.
The first part of the staff analysis has been to survey Rock Region's drivers, Varner said. Next month, staff members will set up at the River Cities Travel Center in Little Rock to get feedback from passengers.
The agency also wants to invite elected officials from its funding partners for a public presentation next month to show the task to be undertaken. It also will likely meet with each governing body individually. The agency's funding partners -- Little Rock, North Little Rock, Pulaski County, Sherwood, Maumelle and Jacksonville -- provide about $12.5 million annually to the agency. Additional funds include federal aid and passenger revenue.
The agency plans to make what route modifications it can without having the extra $18 million annually that the quarter-percent rise in the countywide sales tax was projected to have provided. Voters rejected the tax proposal, with 57 percent opposed and 43 percent in favor. It would have been Pulaski County's first tax solely dedicated to transit.
Because of a formula that apportions route miles in Little Rock, North Little Rock and other parts of the county on the basis of what each partner pays, any route changes must retain the same number of miles or require an adjustment in what each partner pays.
"Even by just adding services in Little Rock, it would impact the others," Varner said. "It will be a balancing act. We will have to be very surgical in how we do this."
Rock Region will keep its Move Central Arkansas strategic plan as a guide to make changes. The plan identified heavily used routes that need more frequent services and areas that need service expansion. Varner said staff members have been looking at which routes and parts of routes have the most frequent riders and which ones don't attract any, based on the drivers' surveys.
Metro on 04/21/2016