Little Rock’s Downtown Is Mostly Parking Lots

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Doady

Little Rock has very little transit service, so it has very little transit ridership, it's simple as that.

No, it isn't that simple, at all. They could build a Tokyo-style network of frequent rail across Little Rock and it would still have crap transit ridership.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

Perhaps the worst are West Texas cities. Midland and Lubbock have a few blocks of buildings downtown in a literal ring of parking lots.

Yeah, West TX, to me, seems like peak anti-urbanity. I mean, Amarillo, Midland and Lubbock are decent sized towns, but their downtowns barely exist. And there don't appear to be prewar neighborhoods of any note.

El Paso has decent urbanity and some prewar neighborhoods, but that's basically New Mexico/intl. bordertown and culturally very different.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Crawford

No, it isn't that simple, at all. They could build a Tokyo-style network of frequent rail across Little Rock and it would still have crap transit ridership.

Where did I compare it to Tokyo? Where? Tell me.

I compared it to places like Seattle, Las Vegas, Oakville, Mississauga, Winnipeg, and Quebec City - sprawling, car-oriented North American cities with little or no rail transit, and you guys act like I am comparing it to fucking Tokyo.

I don't get why the idea of building transit culture causes so much controversy here. Transit is the number one competitor to the automobile, no need for things to be in walking distance. I see it every day here: a non-walkable environment actually increases transit ridership. Places like Mississauga and Brampton would not have such high transit ridership if people could walk and bike everywhere. The buses are full because these places are unwalkable.

Places like Little Rock are not walkable, and that's exactly why they should be looking to transit. And smaller metropolitan areas like this all over the USA don't even need to invest in rail or rapid transit. The distances are just long enough to prevent walking and cycling, but not long enough to interfere with efficient and useful transit. Immense unfulfilled potential to build a transit culture and without high cost. In terms of distances, it's cars, then transit, then bikes, then walking. Transit is the step toward walkability. They have to take that first step.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Doady

Where did I compare it to Tokyo? Where? Tell me.

I'm comparing it to Tokyo. My point is you could even have Tokyo-quality transit in Little Rock, and it will never have good transit ridership. So obviously more bus service would be largely useless.

The people don't want to ride transit. They have no need to ride transit.

Originally Posted by Doady

I compared it to places like Seattle, Las Vegas, Oakville, Mississauga, Winnipeg, and Quebec City - sprawling, car-oriented North American cities with little or no rail transit, and you guys act like I am comparing it to fucking Tokyo.

These are terrible comparisons. Seattle is dense, urban and congested, and a big city with tons of liberal techie young folks. Vegas has OK transit share because the casinos don't provide much parking for employees. The other cities aren't in the U.S. None of these cities are 50% black and massively segregated.

Cities like Little Rock- Memphis, Birmingham, Jackson, Mobile, Montgomery. Sprawly, segregated midsized Deep South cities with huge black populations. All have horrible transit share. It isn't because the service sucks, the service sucks because no one wants to ride transit.

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by Doady

Where did I compare it to Tokyo? Where? Tell me.

I compared it to places like Seattle, Las Vegas, Oakville, Mississauga, Winnipeg, and Quebec City - sprawling, car-oriented North American cities with little or no rail transit, and you guys act like I am comparing it to fucking Tokyo.

I don't get why the idea of building transit culture causes so much controversy here. Transit is the number one competitor to the automobile, no need for things to be in walking distance. I see it every day here: a non-walkable environment actually increases transit ridership. Places like Mississauga and Brampton would not have such high transit ridership if people could walk and bike everywhere. The buses are full because these places are unwalkable.

Places like Little Rock are not walkable, and that's exactly why they should be looking to transit. And smaller metropolitan areas like this all over the USA don't even need to invest in rail or rapid transit. The distances are just long enough to prevent walking and cycling, but not long enough to interfere with efficient and useful transit. Immense unfulfilled potential to build a transit culture and without high cost. In terms of distances, it's cars, then transit, then bikes, then walking. Transit is the step toward walkability. They have to take that first step.

Is it only that? Could it also be that Mississauga has wider streets that are more intimidating to pedestrians? Or that parking is more expensive or harder to find? Or that buses also connect to transit into Toronto, the biggest city in Canada? Or that Mississauga has more transit connections to places in different counties(/equivalents), like Oakville, Hamilton, and Oshawa? Or that land value in Downtown Mississauga is higher than land value in Downtown Little Rock, and parking lots get developed? Or that Mississauga has a bigger footprint? Or that cars are cheaper to own in Arkansas than in Ontario?

[jtown,man]

I know Arkansas culture:

A transit system will never work in the state, not even in its largest city. It will simply be used by the poor, and even they want a car if they don't have one, despertly.

It doesn't need a large transit system though. The downtown core from the interstate to the east stretching to the Capital building is a large area. They could simply extend the trolley system to the west to the Capital building and then loop it back. It would cover most of the urbanity in the city. Also, if that area were to begin to develop properly, it would be a decent sized urban area.

Basically, Little Rock could have a nice core they could be proud of, but for reasons I do not understand(nor looked up), it hasn't changed much from 2000.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'm comparing it to Tokyo. My point is you could even have Tokyo-quality transit in Little Rock, and it will never have good transit ridership. So obviously more bus service would be largely useless.

The people don't want to ride transit. They have no need to ride transit.

These are terrible comparisons. Seattle is dense, urban and congested, and a big city with tons of liberal techie young folks. Vegas has OK transit share because the casinos don't provide much parking for employees. The other cities aren't in the U.S. None of these cities are 50% black and massively segregated.

Cities like Little Rock- Memphis, Birmingham, Jackson, Mobile, Montgomery. Sprawly, segregated midsized Deep South cities with huge black populations. All have horrible transit share. It isn't because the service sucks, the service sucks because no one wants to ride transit.

I wasn't talking about transit in Seattle's core only, but King County Metro which serves all of King County. And of course Seattle has a very highly developed and vibrant core, and transit is part of the reason for that. That is why I think it's important for Little Rock to have transit as well, to start getting rid of the parking lots, filling in the spaces, reducing the distances.

Likewise, Las Vegas system serves all of the metro area, not just the casinos.

You guys act like I am talking about some sort of cultural revolution or something, when I am only talking about a modest shift from cars to buses. Not a major leap like cars to walking, or cars to bicycles, just some people from cars to buses. Maybe not even single drivers to bus riders, it could be car passenger to bus rider as well. Little Rock can't achieve a 5% transit mode share like Las Vegas because of too many black people? Was the reason St. Louis lost 36% of its ridership since 2008 because of too many black people as well? It just makes no sense to me.

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

Is it only that? Could it also be that Mississauga has wider streets that are more intimidating to pedestrians? Or that parking is more expensive or harder to find? Or that buses also connect to transit into Toronto, the biggest city in Canada? Or that Mississauga has more transit connections to places in different counties(/equivalents), like Oakville, Hamilton, and Oshawa? Or that land value in Downtown Mississauga is higher than land value in Downtown Little Rock, and parking lots get developed? Or that Mississauga has a bigger footprint? Or that cars are cheaper to own in Arkansas than in Ontario?

Mississauga's "downtown" is even worse than Little Rock's, parking everywhere, most of it free too. Free parking almost everywhere in Brampton and Mississauga. They are suburbs through and through... except that most people don't work in Toronto. The busiest bus route here, where the LRT is now being built, doesn't connect to Toronto at all. Their independence from Toronto is why Mississauga and Brampton are able to have similar ridership to Hamilton and Oshawa, which are historic cities with their own proper cores. Rock Region Metro of course serves the entire region, so it doesn't have to worry about such political boundaries interfering with transit use at all.

I think the more important thing is the USA needs to stop obsessing over rail. Rail doesn't mean anything for ridership. Nothing. Just look at Dallas finally achieving major ridership growth in 2019. They couldn't do it by building the biggest LRT system in USA, they did it by finally improving bus service. And of course, you can also look at the 4th highest transit mode share in US and Canada, which is Ottawa.

And maybe most important thing is the USA needs to stop looking at car culture as an obstacle to building a transit culture. I see it everyday here: the car culture is the stepping stone toward a transit culture, the same way transit is a stepping stone toward bicycle culture and walkability, one step at a time. And arguably transit is closer to car culture than it is to biking and walking. Canada has that car culture, it has car-oriented built environment like the USA, so why does Canada have similar levels of transit ridership as the UK? It's about taking advantage of a built environment that is more difficult to walk and bike in to get people onto buses, and the USA needs to start doing the same. As I said, places like Little Rock are the perfect size: just big enough to be unwalkable, but not yet too big for a bus-only transit system. It is the perfect opportunity for so many places in the US.

Keep in mind, I'm not saying there are not other factors or differences. But we are talking about a metropolitan area with almost 0% transit mode share. 2.6 million boardings unnually and 88 vehicles for an entire system for an entire metropolitan area of almost 700,000 people. That's like one-twentieth the ridership and one-tenth the amount of buses of Winnipeg or Quebec City. Even if you consider other factors like cost of car ownership or "Arkansas culture" or whatever, one-twentieth or one-tenth is still a ridiculous difference. This is not a black-or-white issue, and that's exactly why we should expect transit in US cities to do better than 0%.

[MonkeyRonin]

I think it's fair to say that there's a bit of a self-reinforcing cycle at play when it comes to transit usage. Low service begets low ridership which begets low service which begets low ridership which begets...

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

I think it's fair to say that there's a bit of a self-reinforcing cycle at play when it comes to transit usage. Low service begets low ridership which begets low service which begets low ridership which begets...

Absolutely.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

I think it's fair to say that there's a bit of a self-reinforcing cycle at play when it comes to transit usage. Low service begets low ridership which begets low service which begets low ridership which begets...

It probably doesn't help that Little Rock's transit fares are only $1.35. Fares probably should like $2.50. Too low fares are a common problem in US.

$1.5M in fare revenue for $11.1M operating budget. With the current fare prices, even if they get double the ridership, they would only be able to increase service by 14%.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Doady

Canada has that car culture, it has car-oriented built environment like the USA, so why does Canada have similar levels of transit ridership as the UK? It's about taking advantage of a built environment that is more difficult to walk and bike in to get people onto buses, and the USA needs to start doing the same.

You are missing something very important, I think. There is more of a collectivist spirit among Canadians than Americans, which has obvious ramifications for transit usage. The disparate approach to dealing with Covid should have demonstrated this pretty clearly. Americans, especially conservative, southern Americans like the people of Arkansas, are obsessed with the notion of personal freedom and independence in a way that I think Canadians might not understand. It's why we have people protesting mask wearing as an infringement of their 'rights'.

People view the bus as a social program in much of the US. It's not just less convenient and actually requires a bit of walking (something most Americans are also unfortunately adverse to), but there is also a stigma associated with taking the bus in most of the US. Having your own vehicle means you are in charge of when and where you go, and riding the bus means you're dependent on someone else. I really think it's that simple. Of course, you can also add on the race layer-- that's always a factor in the US. You can also look at land use patterns. Canada has more dense suburban development. Las Vegas and So Cal cities actually are similar in that regard, and that might help explain why Vegas does slightly better than expected in terms of transit share. But I think the primary driver to why a place like Little Rock won't develop much of a transit share is due to what I described above. It's cultural.

[dc_denizen]

Little Rock could fill in every parking lot with Texas donut style multi family , triple the density and add tons of pedestrian activity , while still lagging on transit

[Blitz]

Originally Posted by edale

You are missing something very important, I think. There is more of a collectivist spirit among Canadians than Americans, which has obvious ramifications for transit usage. The disparate approach to dealing with Covid should have demonstrated this pretty clearly. Americans, especially conservative, southern Americans like the people of Arkansas, are obsessed with the notion of personal freedom and independence in a way that I think Canadians might not understand. It's why we have people protesting mask wearing as an infringement of their 'rights'.

People view the bus as a social program in much of the US. It's not just less convenient and actually requires a bit of walking (something most Americans are also unfortunately adverse to), but there is also a stigma associated with taking the bus in most of the US. Having your own vehicle means you are in charge of when and where you go, and riding the bus means you're dependent on someone else. I really think it's that simple. Of course, you can also add on the race layer-- that's always a factor in the US. You can also look at land use patterns. Canada has more dense suburban development. Las Vegas and So Cal cities actually are similar in that regard, and that might help explain why Vegas does slightly better than expected in terms of transit share. But I think the primary driver to why a place like Little Rock won't develop much of a transit share is due to what I described above. It's cultural.

This is exactly it. It's cultural...and that can't just be changed by improving transit in these smaller cities in the South.

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by edale

You are missing something very important, I think. There is more of a collectivist spirit among Canadians than Americans, which has obvious ramifications for transit usage. The disparate approach to dealing with Covid should have demonstrated this pretty clearly. Americans, especially conservative, southern Americans like the people of Arkansas, are obsessed with the notion of personal freedom and independence in a way that I think Canadians might not understand. It's why we have people protesting mask wearing as an infringement of their 'rights'.

People view the bus as a social program in much of the US. It's not just less convenient and actually requires a bit of walking (something most Americans are also unfortunately adverse to), but there is also a stigma associated with taking the bus in most of the US. Having your own vehicle means you are in charge of when and where you go, and riding the bus means you're dependent on someone else. I really think it's that simple. Of course, you can also add on the race layer-- that's always a factor in the US. You can also look at land use patterns. Canada has more dense suburban development. Las Vegas and So Cal cities actually are similar in that regard, and that might help explain why Vegas does slightly better than expected in terms of transit share. But I think the primary driver to why a place like Little Rock won't develop much of a transit share is due to what I described above. It's cultural.

I completely agree.

This is why I have often thought that many very low ridership cities like Little Rock should basically mostly ditch their entire transit systems except for para-transit.

A system like they have in many cities like Mexico would provide far superior service. They are a sort of communal Uber type system where people can hail certain taxis that accept standard transit fares. You can't call ahead of time but you do get picked up at the nearest taxi stop and are dropped off at the closest taxi stop to where you are going.

Only the very busiest few core routes remain in service and they routes have their frequencies improved greatly. The taxis act as the 'last mile' to the trunk bus routes.

[dc_denizen]

but the low transit has little correlation with density or filling downtown parking lots

no parking lots, low transit

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pi...4d-122.6792783

parking lots, high transit

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ga...!4d-79.7578669

[biguc]

Originally Posted by Blitz

This is exactly it. It's cultural...and that can't just be changed by improving transit in these smaller cities in the South.

Cultures change, guys. There was obviously no car culture before there were cars. If there's no transit, similarly, there will be no transit culture.

It's not like you can expect things to change overnight, but on a generational scale they can and do.

[biguc]

Originally Posted by The North One

I wish people would stop subscribing to this fantasy that American urbanism looks the way it does because it's just where every person "chooses to live" or not to. As if there aren't major government and institutional forces and power systems here that designed this country to look the way it does now.

If there was some effort by these same systems to build infill urban development people would be living there. Nobody will refuse to live in downtown Little Rock if offered affordable housing.

I hear you. A lot of people act like choices come out of nowhere, as some pure act of the will. A lot of people who swear they would never live downtown have just never tried it.

My point is that people who are mobile on a global scale, who have seen many sides and have the resources to choose exactly what they want--the kind of people who start tech companies and could put Little Rock over economically--would not choose to live in Little Rock. That it looks like a car-fucked wasteland is a big part of that.

There's a prime mover problem here, but however they kick it off, the virtuous cycle of better transit-more density-better transit will yield long-term payoffs of vibrancy, culture, and better jobs (which then displace the culture).

I see a lot of smaller cities fret about how to build a tech hub in their city. But you don't--the city itself is the tech hub. If the city isn't good, it's not going to be a tech hub no matter how many warehouses you convert to quirky coworking spaces. The cities that succeed focus on the fundamentals.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by biguc

Cultures change, guys. There was obviously no car culture before there were cars. If there's no transit, similarly, there will be no transit culture.

It's not like you can expect things to change overnight, but on a generational scale they can and do.

But why would it happen? Why would someone in Little Rock ditch their cars to ride a bus? It makes no sense. The switch to cars made sense, a switch to transit in LR makes zero.

[mhays]

Some people already take transit in Little Rock. It's not a question of whether it would be used, but how much. It stands to reason that better transit would increase ridership, at least somewhat. Yes the numbers would still be small initially.

Likewise, some people live in walkable districts in Little Rock. Any increase would add to urbanity.

Building on biguc's point, increases in transit service and walkable density can build upon each other in a virtuous cycle.

This goes double if apartments don't each come with a parking space. Give people the option of saving 20% of the cost and some existing car-less people will leap on it, and some additional people will choose to go without cars. Again, the virtuous cycle.

Too bad there isn't a Downtown university. Many of the best downtowns have major ones on their fringes. Universities tend to be significant drivers of walking, biking, and transit. Perhaps the University of Arkansas or someone else will someday establish a branch campus.

[biguc]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

But why would it happen? Why would someone in Little Rock ditch their cars to ride a bus? It makes no sense. The switch to cars made sense, a switch to transit in LR makes zero.

There are a lot of reasons to not drive: caring about the environment, hating traffic, back pain, it's dangerous, fewer cars make for better cities, hating car maintenance, hating the expense of a car in general, preferring cycling, preferring walking, being an alcoholic.

If transit exists that will take you from where you are to where you want to go, generally when you want, it's reasonable to use it. Some people will never come around, but nobody lasts forever. A generation that grows up with transit available will expect to have the choice. If the transit is takes them from where they are to where they want to go when they want, they'll use it.

Remember, the switch to cars only happened because the US went big on building highways. Other countries didn't, and car culture never caught on quite the same way.

For a really interesting case, look at the Netherlands. Rotterdam was all but levelled in WW2, and they rebuilt on a modernist, car-based model. But, eventually, the Dutch got really upset about children dying in traffic accidents and the country switched over to being the cycling utopia it is today. They never asked why someone would switch from car to bike, they just switched their infrastructure, and it worked.