In 2023, more than 7 billion trips were taken on America’s public transit systems, in towns, cities, and rural areas across the country. Demand for transit is growing, as the cost of car ownership increases and fewer young people express interest in driving. Moreover, as America’s population ages, an increasing number of people will lose the desire or ability to drive. Transit provides an affordable option that allows everyone—including older adults, people with disabilities, youth, and people without cars—to continue participating in the economic and social life of their community.
To meet this demand, transit leaders are finding innovative ways to provide service. Too often, however, these agencies must make difficult trade-offs, shifting and even cutting services as resources are insufficient.
Small Cities, Big Moves focuses on transit in small cities—places with populations between 50,000 and 200,000, of which there are over 300 in the United States. Transit serves an essential role in these communities, yet they are rarely studied.
Jonesboro, Arkansas is the case study feature of this week’s quick takes—read on!
Located in northeast Arkansas, Jonesboro is a community in an urbanized area of 73,781 people with a local economy based primarily upon manufacturing and agricultural production. The city has emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on restoring downtown activity and nightlife. These plans, as well as the community’s paratransit and medical needs, are supported by Jonesboro Economical Transportation (JET), the local transit service operated by the city.
JET runs six days a week, with reduced hours on Saturdays and no service on Sundays. On weekdays, the buses run from 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. (depending on the route) to 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. Sustaining its community with an annual ridership of 85,759 unlinked passenger trips in 2022, JET provides its service with variable fares, with discounted fares for youth and elderly riders. JET’s passengers use the service for a variety of reasons: About one-quarter of trips are taken to and from work, another quarter to medical appointments, and the remainder for grocery and other shopping, as well as social and leisure activities. A third of JET’s passengers do not have driver’s licenses and rely on JET for connection to critical destinations.
JET has successfully developed local partnerships to support its service. Local health care providers, including the St. Bernards Medical Center and two dialysis companies, pay for their patients’ fares on JET, ensuring that transportation to life-saving treatment remains available and affordable for families. In addition, the Jonesboro Chamber of Commerce advertises for JET, helping promote their services to the local community. JET’s goal is ultimately to extend services to more local and regional businesses and workplaces to better support the economy of the region.
While JET has sought local partnerships where they could, most of their support comes from federal funding. As Mike Bilbrey, JET’s transportation options coordinator, observed, the transit system “lives or dies by government grants.” The city recently purchased seven new buses, replacing five older ones and expanding its fleet by two, with assistance from a Federal Transit Administration competitive grant that the city successfully applied for. JET also plans to add 40 more bus shelters around the city to better serve local businesses and residents. Mr. Bilbrey said that “money is [JET’s] biggest holdback” and that with more federal funding, they could initiate studies into how they could link transit to factories and bolster the use of transit for work and other improvements to the local economy.