Jonesboro, AR – (JonesboroRightNow.com) – Nov. 1, 2024 – People gathered as the city officials unveiled one of the city’s new trolley buses and the MLK Bike Trail, during a special ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrating enhanced connectivity in Jonesboro Friday morning at the corner of S. Church and Creath Street.

Jonesboro Director of Parks and Recreation Danny Kapales said the bike trail was a great opportunity to open the connectivity trail between downtown Jonesboro and Arkansas State University.

“This trail is really important,” Kapales stated, noting the A-State clocktower in the distance. “You can see a connection between downtown and ASU through this tower.”

He also noted all the work and connections between the City of Jonesboro, the Arkansas Department of Transportation (ARDOT) and the State of Arkansas to make the project happen.

“Engineering has worked with ARDOT to get this design here. I think it’s a beautiful, complete street, which is something that we’ve needed in Jonesboro for a long time,” he said. “You’ll see these continue throughout Jonesboro as we continue to see with this administration. We’ve done a lot of projects over the last four years, and we will continue to do a lot more projects to make the city of Jonesboro the first-class city that it’s supposed to be.”

Jonesboro Connectivity Advisory Committee Chairman Andy Shatley said the bike lane was a huge deal for residents, noting that it was the first protected bike lane for bicyclists in for the city.

“It’s a huge milestone, but certainly not the finish line. Our committee has worked very hard over the last year or so trying to identify the next one of these around town,” Shatley said. “We’re already in the planning stages all over town to try to make sure that we can provide access to anyone who wants to walk, ride or roll in the city of Jonesboro. I think it represents a philosophical change on what we think infrastructure needs to look like and what we need to prioritize.”

Jonesboro Director of Transit Lee Wells also noted how the new trolley buses would benefit Jonesboro residents.

“It’s going to be a great way to connect both A-State and the city in the downtown area and the rest of the community as well,” Wells stated, noting new sheltered stops that the city will be adding along the routes. “We’ve already added two new stops that are sheltered. Stops that previously were not available to be sheltered. We do have a grant in place as well to bring even more sheltered stops to the community to be able to add that extra piece of connectivity to the Jonesboro community as it needs to be.”

According to Jonesboro Mayor Harold Copenhaver, the projects were made possible through hard work and grants, such as ARDOT TAP [Transportation Alternatives Program] grants, which funded about $900,000 toward the new MLK Bike Trail.

“We needed to progress forward, and we have done so,” Copenhaver stated, noting that with the city council’s approval, they move forward with an additional $1.2 million in order to see this vision come to reality.

He also noted the importance of partnerships with various businesses and organizations, such as City Water and Light, Fisher Arnold, the Jonesboro Chamber of Commerce, Jonesboro Unlimited, the Jonesboro Economic Development Center and many others.

“We’re also looking at phase three on the other side of Aggie Road at Arkansas State University and progressing to our new park in eastern Jonesboro that we just announced less than a month ago. That’s going to be 23 acres, possibly for that side of our community. I’m really pleased with everything that’s going on, but we can’t do it without partnerships,” Copenhaver said.

He then spoke about the vision for public transportation.

“Basically, when it comes to what we were doing with public transportation, we needed to see a vision and the future and we’ve done so in the last four years,” He stated. “It’s imperative that we have 100,000 riders in the city of Jonesboro, we have 20% of our population that is walking to and from work or to restaurants or to just receive food. This is an integral part of our community.”

He then applauded his grants team efforts, noting close to $2 million in grants, approved by city council, to fund the buses, which includes additional buses still to come.

“We have some red ones and blue ones and folks were upping our game, and you can see what this is providing for our community,” he continued. “The other side of that is it brings tourism to Jonesboro. This is something that people want to ride, and they want to be a part of. They want to see it. But it also provides us with the ability to add routes. It’s going to provide us with the ability to use our other fleet for paratransit transportation in the community, which is so key and so important as we have an ageing population in Jonesboro. So, all of these are coming together, along with another grant that we received for almost $900,000 for an additional 27 bus stops and upgrades of another 27 bus stops in our community.”

“All this together is a culmination of a lot of hard work, dedication, not only from the city, but our partners in the community,” Copenhaver said.