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The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.

Arkansas is breaking records and blazing trails very literally.

And welcome to Arkansas Week.

I'm Don Scott.

And this week we tell the story of how walking and cycling trails are transforming the natural state.

In 2024, the state welcomed more visitors than ever before.

We'll be talking about that.

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders says outdoor recreation is a big reason why.

So today, we're taking you on a journey across some of the state's biggest trail projects, including the long awaited Southwest Trail, which recently opened its first phase in southwest Little Rock.

12 years after it was first announced.

And we'll also check in on the Delta Heritage Trail, which is nearing completion.

And we'll look at how greenways are linking communities across central Arkansas.

Joining me today, Pulaski County Judge Barry Hyde.

We also have Charlene County Judge Matt Brumley, and we have Joe Jacobs, a leader of bicycle advocacy of central Arkansas who has been instrumental in designing and creating trails.

He also writes and publishes the website Arkansas Outside Tourism.

Truly connecting communities.

And that's what we're talking about today, literally one step at a time.

Let's start here.

This is so important.

It's very important and a long time coming.

I think I told you when we were getting ready to do this, that 11 years I've been working on this project now.

And when I first started, I argued with the people who had trailblazers before me that we'd be done in six years.

And 11 years later, we're opening the first section.

So I've been humbled and I'm honored that we're able to do this, and I'm honored that y'all are going to give us the attention to help better get the word out that this exists.

Well, it started as an idea, and of course, nothing great ever happens quickly.

I know in Celine County, a huge milestone, at least 4.3 miles worth of trails are usable now.

Well, actually, that's in Pulaski.

Oh, it is.

But it's connecting to it's connecting to Celine County.

We've broken ground in Celine County following right behind Judge Hyde's leadership and Insulin County.

I've just been the judge.

I'm entering my third year now, but I'm bookended by two great leaders in Judge Mahoney and Judge Hyde, who have helped me along the way, along with our citizens in the relationship.

Ships that are built along the way is extremely encouraging.

It's a phenomenal project, but I always say people before project and getting to engage with people that are interested in seeing the success, in seeing their expectations exceeded is.

Judge Hyde and his team have done it, not just the groundbreaking, but the ribbon cutting of the Pulaski County portion of the trail.

The citizens of Saline County come back with just rave reviews, and it puts pressure on me.

When is yours going to be completed and not soon enough is really the answer to that.

Well, we're hearing from so many people, they want this desperately.

And I know Joe, you can speak to this because you hear from so many people day in and day out that want to get outside and they want to move their bodies and do things and see our beautiful state.

Well, the the really when it was first coming around, everybody talked about 65 miles, which is a long way.

And, you know, cyclists are the serious cyclists who go, well, we can ride all the way to Hot Springs in a day and it'll be great.

But the real win here is this these small sections, because it's helping those local communities to get healthier, to have a better quality of life right there.

I believe Judge Hyde said something to me at the ribbon cutting that this was the first greenway built south of 630.

That's an important piece for Little Rock.

And it's just one of it's great.

I got to ride the whole thing.

What's built now And I see several people out there walking, people walking their dogs, people being healthy and enjoying the outdoors.

It was wonderful.

Now you'll be breaking ground on your trail, though, coming up in the in the next few weeks, we'll have our official groundbreaking ceremony.

But the ground has been broken and we have a couple of miles already cleared.

Once this time next year, we'll have seven miles of trail using Pulaski Counties and selling counties together.

But we don't stop.

We're continuously doing the things that need to take place for walking trails, for bicycle trails and insulin.

County, a water trail that connects along with that.

I did read 80% of the folks in Benton said it was very important to have cycling and walking conditions that are favorable in that community.

You know, there were 80% basically that said that is extremely important to them.

And then there were 80% that said, our current disposition in 2016 was poor.

When it came to that.

Our goal is that they never have to say that again.

Not only is it great and excellent to come to Saline County, Pulaski County, that 65 miles of trail, but people are coming from out of state in all parts of the state to come see what's happening in our counties.

Well, speaking of the state, set a record in 2020 for 50 million visitors spending $10 billion.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying in large part because they want to see the outdoors, the natural state.

And if you get a chance to visit the first section that we opened, you really I think, appreciate that because all over it's right on the Little Rock City Line and in a very dense urban area, this is probably one of the most natural and peaceful and beautiful pieces of trail.

What you say, Joe?

Oh, yeah.

It's one of the things that when you get out there, the realization once you're out there that you're still pretty much in town, but it doesn't seem like it at all.

And because in just that small piece so far, there's wetlands, there's rolling hills, it's wooded, it's some of the best bird watching, I think around is going to be right in there.

So there's all kinds of things to do there.

And it's in the city pretty much.

So that's unique.

That's and it's connecting a national historic site.

Of course, Little Rock Central High School, which is also so important.

So many people want to see that.

And the next our next three sections are well underway in design.

The very next one will probably be ready to go out for bids, construction bids before the end of the year and the next one after that.

There's a total of eight more sections between what we've opened already and central High.

And just, you know, I'm not known for my patience, I'm known for my persistence.

And so to to persist a little bit, we hired a second engineer to start at the end and work back and we figure out who who got the lion's share when they finally met.

And that's been pretty effective.

So we expect that this time next year that at least that first section right at Central High will be under construction as well.

And it's the plaque portion remains a very peaceful, natural setting.

It it will go into flush bottoms at 65th Street and all the way through that bottom area and come up next to the state fairgrounds and then travel along the tracks to Quigley Stadium and then end up the visitor center at Central High.

So we're excited about it.

And that's not the only one we've got moving.

We've got Southeast Trail, we've got the regional Greenway system.

The one of the things that happens off of these greenways, these initial greenways are the, the fingerlings.

I guess that will branch off.

Bryant barely almost touches the Southwest trail and they're already working I know on their trails to connect to this.

So this this will be kind of that mainstream like the river trail it sure trails all branches off of that so it's it's a network.

Oh for sure.

I mean, starting in the Central Park, branching out and then branching out from there, which is the whole purpose of this, to connect communities.

Right.

And it's not just for recreation and for birdwatching and the nature lovers and the high school track team and everybody that uses these facilities.

It's also for commuters.

And there's a real value in in that youth in that people that are going to work every day on the trail.

And there's a bunch of them, believe me, they're not in a car putting more carbon and pollution in the air.

So and, you know, it's it's it's expensive to build a trail, but it's not nearly as expensive.

It is a four lane highway.

We'll talk about that.

Joe, I want to bring you into that conversation, because there are there's an entire community of cyclists who are doing that right.

And it's really is all about connections.

Years ago, 20 years ago, almost 20 years ago, we kind of completed the loop.

It's not quite complete.

We've got a few things to fix, though, but the loop of the Arkansas River Trail and that was kind of a hub.

And the next step is building those spokes out.

Sometimes they're Greenway trails, much like what the Southwest Trail is going to be.

Sometimes it's just bike infrastructure on the road, whether it's a separated bike lane or bike lanes themselves or even the simple SROs that are out there.

But it develops into ways that people can get from their home to work to hospitals, to school, to all all the different places that we have to go every day without having to have a car.

I actually know people who live in downtown Little Rock, professionals don't own cars.

They they're able to because they live downtown and there's enough infrastructure now that they can get everywhere they need to, either on a bike or on transit, on busses.

So it's pretty cool.

And I think it's going to save a lot of our issues with having to build more roads through neighborhoods coming from West Little Rock and whatnot.

These these things all will solve a lot of those issues and save us money in the long run.

Wouldn't that be a thought when you look at the traffic toward Saline County and and and back during rush hour traffic is pretty bad.

But I do want to talk about Saline County and the Southwest Trail and the Old River Bridge that is a part of this, such a historic part of the community.

It was.

And of course, the movie Split in Slingblade excuse me, and it is undergoing a renovation.

Tell us the the bridge and place handrails are going up.

The approaches are there.

It connects Benton to the high school side of the Saline River.

It's gorgeous.

It's the oldest bridge and its original location in the state of Arkansas.

It was put in place in 1891, taken out of commission in the mid seventies when it was damaged beyond repair.

They felt at that time the bridge has been deconstructed and taken to Michigan to be refurb ished and then brought back and put back together piece by piece by our friends.

MOBLEY And it is an amazing thing just to see that again connections connections to the great Saline River in the way that we're going to be able to incorporate that in the Southwest Trail, literally trains versus over the Old River Bridge.

And it's just an exciting thing that again, I keep saying it, but I think it will exceed the expectations of those visitors.

It does mine like Old bridge.

What it is gorgeous in these trails with the trees and the canopies and you do forget where you are.

It certain times you're in the middle of a dense metropolitan area, but you have a reprieve from that.

You have a place to take your family.

You also have a place to learn much about history and the importance of that history in central Arkansas.

Well, that was where a lot of this was born.

Let's take us back to the beginning, because as you were saying, patience isn't necessarily your virtue, but this idea was born out of something.

What was that?

It was born out of these connections.

And this new actually was newly budding transportation system and opportunity and then all the side benefits of it.

My predecessor and the former mayor of North Little Rock, Pat Hayes, and Jim Daly in Little Rock, those are the folks that for central Arkansas, I think Joe would agree who really got things going.

They decided to work together.

And in their travels around the country and in Europe, saw the benefit of people out, relying on bicycles and walking trails for much of their transportation needs.

So that's that's that's the folks that started it.

The the river trail is the center hub.

But remember, it goes all the way up to Little Italy out Highway 304.

And now the Southeast Trail, which is a real tourism generated trail from the Clinton Library on top of the levee along the river to the airport terminal so that the people who come in on Friday afternoon and their bike is in a box and they go to the lobby of the airport and they put it back together and their boxes stored there for them, and they take off with their backpack and they go up, check into the Capitol Hotel or, you know, right way in or whatever hotel they're going to stay in in the in the city.

And then they bike and they eat and they drink all weekend.

And on Sunday night or Monday morning, they ride back to the airport and put their bike back in a box and fly home and I guess show up for work.

And that trail eventually will run through the port still on the levee all the way to Wrightsville.

To Wrightsville.

That's right.

And this we have to talk about what this does economically for us as well.

I want to hear from all three of you on this.

It is obviously something that connects our communities, our people here, Arkansans, but it also injects a great amount of money into our economy.

I do I do a lot of economic development work with the central Arkansas economic developers, especially the greater chamber.

And there is you know, it's all about these these experts who travel and look at sites for these major corporations or even smaller corporations that want to relocate or considering elsewhere.

And there's not a one of them that one of their checkboxes is not amenities.

And so for our for our abundance of natural environment and our trail system and even our trolley system downtown and the river Bridge, the historic bridge and Sailing county, those are all big items.

People want to live here.

They love our cost of living, but people want to live here well, and they obviously want to visit.

Talk about what you see in the cycling community as far as he spoke about people flying in just to ride our trails.

Right.

The one of the things about when we look at some of these big projects, all of a sudden we tag tourism to it is is this going to bring in tourism dollars?

And I always like to look at it more as a backdoor to tourism.

Let's look at it as this is improving the quality of life for people who live here.

And people want to visit places people want to live.

So the more improvements to our own quality of life that we have here with things like these facilities, the more people are going to come to see what we're doing because they heard that it's a great place to live.

And so with the cyclists, we see the same thing.

We, you know, we build mountain bike trails out of Pinnacle Mountain.

There's more trails coming.

The city of little rocks putting in all kinds of trails in their system.

We've got rock climbing in north.

Little Rock is about to pop up and a beautiful pump track up there.

All these projects like this make it an outdoor feast here.

There's so much to do here as we improve water access Sling River.

If we get down into the bottoms area and be able to go float down in those areas doing all these different things, you can do all that in Little Rock and it's amazing.

And that's what brings people in.

And so these kind of amenities that just project more of a good, strong quality of life are what's going to bring more people here to visit and to live at.

Yeah.

I want to talk a little about the funding model, how this has been possible to pay for so so for Pulaski County, as soon as we obtained our first grant, a federal grant, Representative Bruce Westerman was such a huge help in getting that that that design grant started.

Pulaski County started applying for every grant and trying to hunt down every grant we could find and to the point that we're in a fortunate position now that we're we're nearly completely funded for all the remainder of construction in place.

The county needed for the Southwest Trail.

And those are typically 8020 matches, and especially since COVID, that system has been pretty rich, pretty abundant.

I'm afraid that it probably the stream is going to get a little narrower as as what's going on on the federal level now.

But even through our metro plan, our metropolitan Metropolitan planning organization for the four counties that are central Arkansas, we dedicated, I think it was five years ago might be six that we would embark on designing this regional trail system that goes from the river trail all the way up to pass Conway, all the way up to ward, all the way out to Lone Oak, all the way down to Wrightsville.

And the board decided to dedicate over the next ten years $55 million of grant funds that would just be for that regional system.

And some of the communities that I, you know, that I thought all they don't care anything about trails are just going crazy.

Wharton Cabot is doing a great job.

Bryant has been doing a good job and Benton has bought in.

Mayor Farmer is really excited about it.

And and Bryant still kind of grumbling that, you know, that Southwest Trail didn't run right through us.

So we're going to make our own connection.

And so it's it's really it's been real helpful to improve and expand the connections between all of our communities and that we're more than just little Rock or just Conway.

We're central Arkansas, you know, Northwest.

If they beat us on anything, they figured out how to name themselves.

And central Arkansas is going to be important in defining our place in the future.

Well, I want to ask also in Celine County, have you received support as well, federally and.

Absolutely.

The dollars pardon me, the dollars we have received, we need to be good stewards of those dollars.

But from Federal Highway, Arkansas Department, Transportation, the Economic Development Administration, all of these areas, we do everything that we can is our partners do to find where we can be good stewards and how we can use those dollars.

Well, we've been extremely fortunate in in being able to do that.

We also want our citizens and those too, to have some ownership and investment in that.

And those opportunities are there.

We have people that are interested in doing that.

This does stoke economic development and we do put in those spurs that go into historic downtown and into Bryant and a world class bike park and then all of those things are things to look at.

People want to come visit and we get to turn back those dollars that we've paid out into our community and see something for generations to come.

And so that's exciting.

We've talked about just, you know, sort of the central Arkansas counties that you're talking about, but this does extend statewide.

And I want to bring you in, Joe, on the the Delta Heritage Trail and where that starts in Helena following the Mississippi River.

And then I want to get to northwest Arkansas, because, of course, we're starting in the central part of the state.

But as we grow, I mean, will we connect everywhere?

Sure.

I think it's happening already.

We now have a there's a bike route that goes across the state now.

I think it's been or 80 that goes through North Little Rock.

It goes from West Memphis to North Little Rock right now.

Eventually it'll go all the way to Fort Smith.

And then I believe it's turning up and going up through northwest Arkansas.

And this is a bike route that's published nationally, internationally as a way to get through the state on a bike until that was designated.

Every map that you ever saw of a way to travel across the country, even if you were going from Florida to Washington state, you went around Arkansas.

Well, now you can go through it and that's that is going to eventually connect all these things.

So where it comes through in West Memphis, you can right now ride the big river trail down as far as Marianna.

And then you can get on the then you follow the high road or low road.

You can go gravel or paved down to Helena and get on the Delta Heritage Trail, which is getting near completion.

It's not quite there yet.

That will take you all the way down to Arkansas City.

So this is huge expansion all through the Delta Beautiful, another Rails Trails program that that is.

And the unique thing of it is it's going to go through the White River Wildlife Refuge.

It crosses the white and the Arkansas rivers.

It's a lot of it's going to be above and you're going to be able to go ride through there and see things that people have not even been able to get to in decades.

So there used to be a train that went through there a long time ago, but now you'll be able to go through there and see wildlife will be some, again, more great bird watching down there, wildlife viewing 84 and a half miles of just that part, not including the big river trail.

So there's a lot going on out there.

What's left to complete there?

They're down at the wildlife refuge now and they're trying to finish up the bridges that are going over the the rivers.

Those are big projects.

One of them is very similar to the Clinton Library Bridge, which was a big project.

That's just one of the bridges on this project.

And then so you've got the two bridges there and then you've got overall the wetlands.

So there's a lot of trestle out there that's sitting above.

And this is a project that happened again.

It started Delta Heritage Trail, became a state park, I'm thinking 30, 35 years ago at least, and a little bit of it got done and then it just kind of stopped.

And there was there were trouble with getting the train, the track and who owned the track and all that stuff over the years.

Well, just a few years ago, when Grady Spann was a park superintendent, he decided that we're going to get this funded before I leave, which is exactly what he did.

And we worked with the Walton family and took them down there.

And they were generous, much more generous than we thought they were going to be.

And with the stipulation that it was to be used for matching funds to finish the whole thing.

So in the end, we wound up with about 40 million with the matching funds and all that to help complete the whole project.

And Shay Lewis, who is now in charge of the state parks, has done a great job of getting that done and it's going to be beautiful.

We are nearing the end of this great conversation.

I want to give each of you just 20 quick seconds.

Final thoughts?

Well, I, I would invite the public to Google Metro plan.

And when you get to their page, click on the regional Greenway or regional Greenway Trail System and it'll show what is planned and what is existing.

It's amazing.

And they'll get excited.

Very incredible.

I would say that this is a way, not to be cliche, but connections complement one another.

It's extremely encouraging.

This is a project that's well worth taking a look at from Central High Bathhouse Row with the oldest bridge in the state of Arkansas in its original location right in the middle, come to Sterling County, Pulaski County, Garland County.

And let's be proud of what we're able to accomplish together.

Joe, It's just another great reason to want to live in central Arkansas.

I mean, I've lived all over the country all my life, never lived anywhere more than five years I've been here for over 25 years because of the infrastructure that's grown around me since I've been here.

It's just fantastic.

I love living here.

All right, Joe Jacobs with Arkansas outside, of course, advocacy for all things outdoors here in Arkansas.

Thank you so much, Selene County Judge Matt Brumley, we appreciate you.

And of course, Pulaski County Judge Barry Hyde.

We thank you all so much for your thoughts.

So exciting.

Can't wait to see the progression.

And of course, we'll be checking in with you as it does progress and come to completion at some point.

Thank you so much.

And that is our show for this week here on Arkansas Week.

I'm Don Scott.

Thanks for being here and we'll see you next time.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.