Pandemic slows Arkansas’s U.S. Bicycle Route progress
The Arkansas Department of Transportation has been meeting with community leaders in cities along a proposed U.S. Bicycle Route from Little Rock to West Memphis in advance of submitting the route for approval to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officialas. Getting supportive resolutions from cities is an important step in the application process, Kim Sanders, bicycle-pedestrian coordinator for the state Department of Transportation, said.
But moving the application along requires meeting with a lot of people, which is difficult amid the COVID-19 pandemic: “We’re kind of at a standstill for that right now.” The association has spring and fall deadlines for submissions. Sanders had hoped to make the fall deadline, but, thanks to the pandemic, that is unlikely, she said.
With money from a five-year, $3.2 million State Physical Activity and Nutrition Program grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hired Crafton Tull for a feasibility study on creating the route from West Memphis to Little Rock. That study led to the proposed route.
The U.S. Bicycle Route System was conceived in 1978 by the highway and transportation officials’ association, which coordinates on numbering interstate highways. The routes use a mixture of low-traffic roads, off-road paths and bike lanes to get riders safely across long distances. Adventure Cycling, the nonprofit that worked with the Arkansas Parks and Recreation Foundation to develop the Arkansas High Country Route, is a lead advocate on further development of the system and the source for maps and GPS info. A little more than half of the states in the country have designated USBRS routes. UAMS has been working on the route with the state Department of Parks and Tourism, Arkansas Department of Transportation and members of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Cycling.
The Department of Transportation plans to submit another application for a route from the Missouri border south to Alma along with the Little Rock to West Memphis route or soon thereafter. Eventually, the plan is to have another route from Little Rock to Fort Smith, which would connect to the Alma-to-Missouri route, Sanders said.
“We get a lot of bicycle tourism already,” Sanders said. “ We get a lot of mountain biking tourism. There are a lot of people who get out and like to ride across their region, across their state, across multiple states. We’d like to establish a safe route to draw more bicycle tourism of a different kind.”
The hope is that signage will accompany each route, Sanders said, but that hasn’t been fleshed out.