Before the year is out, people who live in Conway and work in Little Rock will have an option other than driving their personal vehicles for the commute.
A new van pool program is expected be available for commuters who want the option to park their cars and ride to work.
Although the program isn't exactly mass transit, it will be run by a mass-transit system, Rock Region Metro, for Conway. It's Rock Region's first foray outside Pulaski County and it's Conway's first experience with mass transit.
"Baby steps" is how Candy Jones, the grant administrator for Conway, described the program.
Still, Conway Mayor Bart Castleberry said the move, while modest, is nonetheless exciting.
"This is our first step toward a mass-transit system," he said.
And it is the only system Conway could start without costing the city a dime.
As a city with a population of more than 50,000, it is eligible for federal transit money, which has been accumulating at the rate of more than $800,000 annually since 2013. The city has a balance of $2.4 million in those funds, according to Jones.
The idea of developing a mass-transit option for Conway isn't new.
A study released in 2014 showed that a limited express bus service from Conway to Little Rock would attract up to 90 riders per day.
Express bus service, unlike traditional bus service, has limited pickup and drop-off locations and uses the quickest routes, such as interstates, to carry passengers from major origination points to major destination points.
But the idea didn't go far with no one willing to underwrite the costs.
The study found capital costs could exceed $1.3 million if Conway and Faulkner County funded the service.
Rock Region Metro, then operating as Central Arkansas Transit, would have incurred less than $1 million in capital costs if it shouldered the financial burden, according to the study.
With little risk, "we wanted to see if this is something we want to do," Jones said.
The Conway City Council on Tuesday approved a resolution requesting the designation of Rock Region as the direct recipient of the city's federal transit funds, a necessary step to allow the transit agency to contract for the service. The Federal Transit Administration is expected to sign off on the partnership in short order, according to Jones.
Under the agreement, Rock Region Metro will go through the process of selecting a company to provide the vans and drivers.
The transit agency is looking forward to the partnership, which officials said was forged with the help of the Arkansas Department of Transportation.
"The immediate benefit to Metro in this partnership is having a new coordinated effort to provide a transit connection to a city outside the agency's current service footprint," Wanda Crawford, the agency's acting executive director, said Wednesday at a meeting of the Metroplan board of directors. "The immediate benefit to the city of Conway is being able to offer a new transit service in a major commuter corridor that doesn't require any local funding match.
"We're excited to take the first step to make the I-40 corridor multi-modal."
In response to questions from fellow board members, Crawford said the number of vans the program would begin with would depend on how many people express interest in using it.
"It may be one van, it may be two, depending on the demand for this service," she said. "And to be a van pool program, it needs to be between four and 15 passengers per van."
Enterprise, the rental-car company, operates a van pool service and provided some insight into how the service works and what it offers passengers, Jones said. Enterprise vans are outfitted, for example, with free Wi-Fi.
"We're hoping that's a big draw," Jones said.
Using the van pool won't leave passengers without an option in case of, for example, a family emergency, she said. Provisions will be inserted into the contract to allow those passengers to be taken care of.
Tab Townsell, the Metroplan executive director and Castleberry's predecessor as Conway mayor, said until Conway decided to develop the van pool program, the city was returning the money to the Arkansas Transportation Department to be spent elsewhere in the state.
"Those transit monies designated for a place inside our region will now be staying in our region," he said. "This is a win for transportation, and for public transportation, in particular, for our region."
Metro on 03/01/2018