Charles Frazier rode a bus to the top job at Pulaski County's transit agency.
A few days before his interview for the job as executive director, Frazier took rides on the buses as well as the streetcars to get a feel for Rock Region Metro. The rides -- and the insight gained from them -- paid off with an offer to become Rock Region's executive director this summer.
Why mess with success? Six months later, Frazier said he still tries to ride a bus once a week, including the express bus from his home in west Little Rock, to glean additional wisdom that comes from riding the routes.
"I'm a visual learner," Frazier said. "I need to see things for them to sink in."
Frazier said he believes that method of gaining knowledge has a broader application that can pay additional dividends for the transit agency and the communities it serves, which is why he has been escorting board members, and other city and county leaders on bus rides. Even an interview with an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter took place one December afternoon while riding a bus, a streetcar and a para-transit van.
The strategy worked on Julia Everett. Everett is assistant director at the Maumelle Chamber of Commerce. She joined the transit agency's board about the same time Frazier was hired and knew little about transit except that her city needs more of it. Service in Maumelle is limited to a daily express route.
"We have one ride in the morning and one ride out in the afternoon," she said. "Workforce for me is a big topic. Companies are always asking how do we get more workers, better workers, all of that. Some of it has to do with transportation.
"If we could figure out a way to get better busing through Maumelle, then our industrial park would have an opportunity for a bigger and better workforce. People would have more options. Maumelle has a pretty large industrial park. There are great jobs here. It's just kind of tucked away."
On a personal level, Everett said she has little need for transit. Her office is just a few blocks from her Maumelle home. So she took up Frazier's offer to provide an orientation for new board members, including a ride on some of the system's equipment.
First up was a para-transit van that operates as part of Metro Links, which provides a vital service to thousands of Pulaski County residents whose disabilities prevent them from providing their own transportation or even accessing the regular bus routes. The service is federally mandated but is limited to residents who live within three-quarters of a mile of a bus stop.
Everett volunteered to ride the way many of the para-transit clients so: In a wheelchair. A transit agency staff member helped her negotiate the lift. Once her wheelchair was positioned inside, the staff member strapped the wheelchair to the van floor. About 40 percent of the para-transit clients use wheelchairs, transit officials said.
Everett came away impressed.
"I was not aware of the extent of services having to do with para-transportation," she said. "I wasn't aware of all the rules. I'm a new board member. I'm still learning. But I just wasn't aware of everything they did offer and the kind of personal service they do give. Most of the bus drivers have their regular riders, so they can take care of each other. I was very impressed with it."
The rides allow community leaders to "really start to get inside of what we do on a day-to-day basis," Frazier said. "It's access to opportunity, but it just doesn't happen on its own. We have a staff of 206 people. They're highly trained. They want to make a positive impact in the community."
In addition to encouraging the county's decision-makers to ride buses, over the past six months Frazier has quickly familiarized himself with the system and helped lead the agency to embark on several initiatives he inherited in various stages of development, as well as initiate several of his own.
They have included simply holding a graduation ceremony for their newest hires who have completed their training, complete with a commencement speaker -- in this case Margaret Ellibee, chancellor at the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College.
Under his guidance, the transit agency is in the midst of a six-month pilot project to test a mobile fare payment system that riders can download to their smartphones to pay bus fare instead of using cash or a bus pass.
Frazier also has picked up the pieces of a failed initiative to dedicate a one-fourth percentage-point increase in the county sales tax to transit. Voters rejected it in the March 2016 primary.
One of the recommendations that grew out of the study supporting the initiative was to create on-demand service in which buses would respond only at riders' requests.
Rock Region will test the concept as part of a modification of Route 11. A deviation added to service along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to serve Philander Smith College attracted few new riders. Beginning early next year, the deviation will be used only when riders request it.
Frazier said he wants to more widely employ the concept later in 2019.
Last month, the Rock Region board approved a proposal to enter into a fare agreement with a coalition of homelessness organizations that would provide free bus passes to eligible people living on the streets as a way to help them get to jobs and into homes.
The agreement is modeled after arrangements the transit agency has reached with several educational institutions, including the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the Little Rock School District. They pay annual fees to provide free bus passes to their students.
Frazier didn't need to ride the streetcar to know no one else was riding it. To boost ridership, he helped negotiate an agreement with three of Rock Region's major funding partners -- Little Rock and North Little Rock and Pulaski County -- to underwrite the streetcar system to eliminate the $1 fares.
The free rides began Dec. 21 and are scheduled to continue throughout 2019. Unlike the other initiatives, the reaction was almost instantaneous.
On the first day of the free fares, 445 people rode the streetcars, almost four times as many who rode the streetcar on the same day in 2017. In the first week after eliminating the fares, ridership has almost doubled to 2,773, compared with the same week last year when 1,448 rode the streetcars.
Frazier said he hopes the increased ridership is sustained and will help bring focus to a study of the streetcar system next year.
"We can't have that conversation because people say, no one is riding it," he said. "If we can demonstrate that it's a resource enjoyed by people, utilized by people, you get all of the hotels, you get visitors and convention bureau, both chambers, everybody seeing, wow.
"This year's all about building that coalition of support, demonstrating that we're efficient with our public dollars and we provide a good service."
Not bad for the first six months of "an accidental transit professional," as Frazier likes to describe himself. His most recent job was assistant director for the transit agency in Palm Beach County, Fla., but the Pacific Northwest native's background is in technology and finance.
He worked in two posts in Palm Beach County government, including heading security and electronic services.
"We were taking care of the Palmtran buses, the electronics in those systems, and I became more and more interested in public transit," he said. "I used public transit in Los Angeles and loved it, and the assistant director position came open at Palmtrans, and I wanted it. I lobbied heavily to get that position. Once I was there, I fell in love with the industry. It's a great service we provide."
But not everything he has touched at Rock Region has turned to gold.
The Rock Region Metro board of directors approved a $19.2 million operating budget for 2019 that his staff proposed. But Pulaski County and major cities within the county that help subsidize the transit agency's operations will contribute $348,000 less than the staff initially proposed.
The budget instead takes the money from the agency's reserve fund balances after the county and the cities of Little Rock, North Little Rock, Sherwood and Maumelle balked at contributing up to 5 percent more to Rock Region's operations in 2019 than they did this year.
"The fact of the matter is I'm still learning and observing," Frazier said. "My first six months has been absolutely tremendous. It's a very, very good system. Like I said before -- safe, reliable, cost-efficient.
"But it's not sufficient for what our community needs. It's starting to give me some good motivation for next year and the year after. At some point in the future we need to talk about a dedicated funding source for transit because we need to be future-ready. We'll get there. I'm happy with my first six months. I like being here."
Metro on 12/30/2018