According to Rock Region interim director Wanda Crawford, she also wants to hire an second marketing person (and fund it out of the 9 million) to teach people how to ride a bus. We are not pulling your leg, read it yourself.
We called Crawford and she confirmed that she wants to hire a person to "teach people how to ride a bus."
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| WANDA CRAWFORD - INTERIM DIRECTOR ROCK RIVER METRO |
Apparently Crawford has lost her mind. If you need to have it explained to you how to ride a bus, you probably don't have any business riding one anyway. At least not without a keeper. Her normal position is that of finance director and that might need to be looked into by the agencies that Rock Region Metro is accountable to.
At any given time of the day you are only likely to find one or two riders on any bus - except for rush hours then you midnight find half a dozen or so. And ridership is declining.
Crawford blames it on lower gas prices. We think that as as around 60% of the individuals that work in Little Rock come from outside the city, that probably has more to do with declining ridership than anything else. For the workers in the city, they have a mean travel time to work of only 18.7 minutes and you will wait around longer to catch the bus than it will take you to drive to work. Plus there is the added convenience of being able to go someplace for lunch of run errands.
In 2016 voters in Little Rock overwhelmingly defeated a tax increase to raise some 18 million in funds. And the city was not willing to fork over an additional $71,000 to keep the free trolley rides that had been offered this summer going in 2018.
Being the civic minded publication that we are, our staff developed this simple, yet effective guide that Rock Region Metro can use to educate potential riders.
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Take a look at this matter being discussed that the last Little Rock Board of Director's meeting.
