Thousands hit the trails in Northwest Arkansas

Karen Minkel, home region program director for the Walton Family Foundation, poses for a photo Thursday on the Razorback Regional Greenway trail near Compton Gardens and Conference Center in Bentonville. For more photos, go to www.nwadg.com/photos.
Karen Minkel, home region program director for the Walton Family Foundation, poses for a photo Thursday on the Razorback Regional Greenway trail near Compton Gardens and Conference Center in Bentonville. For more photos, go to www.nwadg.com/photos.

Northwest Arkansas' similarity to cities in California might not be obvious.

photo

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

A map showing the location of and information about the Razorback Greenway Trail.

But a study has found Northwest Arkansas has a similar number of cyclists per capita as San Francisco does and about the same number of pedestrians per capita as San Diego.

"I was pleasantly surprised by how we compared to some of these other cities in terms of system usage," said Karen Minkel, the home region program director for the Walton Family Foundation, which commissioned the study.

The study looked specifically at trail usage in Northwest Arkansas, compared with streets and trails in other cities.

Since 2000, the foundation has invested more than $50 million in trail development in Northwest Arkansas. That amount includes $43 million for paved, multi-use trails and $8 million for natural-surface trails.

The foundation has spent $18 million to support the Razorback Regional Greenway, a paved multi-use trail that stretches 36 miles from south Fayetteville north to Bella Vista. Total cost for construction of the Razorback Greenway was about $38 million.

A "greenway" is a corridor of undeveloped land preserved for recreational use or environmental protection.

Minkel said the study shows the community is using the trails -- with some areas seeing an average of more than 800 pedestrians per day and more than 700 cyclists.

"If you think about our investment in trails, we want people to be using them," Minkel said. "So part of this is to have hard data that suggested how many people were using the trails on average. We also wanted to establish a baseline so we could see growth over time. And thirdly, we wanted to be able to have an additional tool to help us analyze how best to invest in the trail system."

Chen Ryan Associates, a transportation planning and traffic engineering firm in San Diego, conducted the count at 53 locations along several trails in Northwest Arkansas from April through part of June.

The research team used 24-hour continuous infrared counters and pneumatic tubes. The method counts a person each time one crosses part of the trail where a monitor is located.

Chen Ryan added the average number of cyclists per day at the three busiest spots along Northwest Arkansas trails -- all of which were along the Razorback Greenway. The firm did the same when tallying average pedestrian usage.

Those numbers were compared with the three busiest sites in Minneapolis; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco; San Diego County; and Maricopa County, Ariz.

Chen Ryan chose those places for the comparison because they have high levels of trail use and comparable data collection that had already been done.

While the study examined only trails in Northwest Arkansas, it included the busiest locations in the comparison places, which were often city streets. Also, in comparison cities, some counts were done over longer periods of time than in Northwest Arkansas.

"While there are groups of folks who bike trails, most people here are on streets, which is why the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has worked for more than 40 years on making our streets safer for people who bike," said Chris Cassidy, a spokesman for the coalition.

In Northwest Arkansas, the average number of daily cyclists -- 2,191 -- at the three points of heaviest trail usage was divided by the 2010 population of 491,966 to get 4.45 cyclists per 1,000 population.

In San Francisco, the average was 4.78 cyclists per 1,000 population at the three busiest locations in the city.

Britney Schrag, the program director for the Bicycle Coalition of the Ozarks, said she was in San Francisco in April and isn't surprised that its cycling compares with Northwest Arkansas' statistically.

"With the amount of infrastructure that we have, with bike education in the schools and the number of students, it really is pretty comparable," she said.

Paxton Roberts, executive director of the Bicycle Coalition, said the Razorback Greenway has transformed cycling in Northwest Arkansas.

The Greenway was officially completed earlier this year, but it includes sections of trail that were finished years ago.

"It is just amazing to see our area transformed so much by building that piece of infrastructure," Roberts said. "It's exceeding expectations in the amount of trail users. From the Bicycle Coalition's standpoint, we want to see more people riding bikes for whatever reason."

Jack Pate of West Fork said it makes sense the Razorback Greenway gets most of Northwest Arkansas' cycling traffic.

In 2010, Pate founded the Northwest Arkansas Cycling group on meetup.com, a online social networking portal. The group, which caters to recreational cyclists, now has about 500 members.

"Our streets have never been very cycling friendly, so the Greenway is naturally going to see more use than a city with infrastructure designed for humans without motors," Pate said.

"Before the Greenway, most of the cyclists that you would see out on the roads were all pretty hard-core riders. With the trail system in place, I'm seeing a big increase in the number of people who just want to ride a bicycle for fun. From the number of bike shops that have sprouted up along the trail, it's clear there's a big demand."

While Northwest Arkansas' count was similar to San Francisco's, it was considerably fewer than 18.89 per 1,000 in Portland, and 40.99 per 1,000 in Minneapolis, two cities known for cycling.

But pedestrian traffic in Northwest Arkansas was actually higher than in Portland -- 4.4 pedestrians per 1,000 residents vs. 3.31 in Portland, according to the study. San Diego County had 4.54 pedestrians per 1,000 residents, according to the study.

"The study estimated that an average of 67,728 annual cyclists per site are anticipated across the Northwest Arkansas system," according to a summary.

That average includes a maximum of 201,035 bicycles annually at the busiest site to a minimum of 1,449 at others. Fayetteville's Skull Creek Trail had the most bicycle traffic. Skull Creek is a trail in downtown Fayetteville that's part of the Razorback Greenway.

"The study estimated that an average of 58,953 annual pedestrians per site are anticipated across the system," according to the summary. That ranged from a high of 291,836 to a low of 4,407.

According to a map that accompanied the study, the busiest areas along the Razorback Greenway were downtown Fayetteville and Bentonville for pedestrians and north Fayetteville for cyclists. The Dickson Street entertainment district is in downtown Fayetteville, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is near downtown Bentonville.

Downtown Fayetteville had an average of 833 pedestrians on weekdays, compared with 826 on weekends in downtown Bentonville. An interactive version of the map is available at: waltonfamilyfoundation.org/our-impact/home-region/nwatrails.

Most of the cyclists along the Razorback Greenway were counted just south of the Fulbright Expressway tunnel in Fayetteville. That area saw 759 cyclists on an average Saturday or Sunday.

The study included Northwest Arkansas' 97 miles of paved, connected, multi-use trails and about 36 miles of natural-surface trails.

The area's paved multi-use trails had about 10 times more bicycle traffic than the natural-surface trails, which are popular with mountain bikers.

Northwest Arkansas' paved multi-use trails had about seven times more pedestrian traffic than natural-surface trails, which are popular with hikers.

The study indicated that more people of limited income use trails in Northwest Arkansas than in other areas studied.

Also, the vast majority of trail use in Northwest Arkansas is for recreation, not commuting, according to the study.

Multi-use trails in Northwest Arkansas were busiest for cyclists at 7 p.m. on weekdays and 3 p.m. on weekends. Use of natural-surface trails peaked at 4 p.m. on both weekends and weekdays, according to the study.

There were more cyclists on sections of the trail where the population is dense and employment levels are high. But there were fewer cyclists in high-income areas, according to the study.

"High-income sites averaged 97 riders during the week and 187 on the weekend, while sites in low-income strata averaged 213 during the week and 417 on the weekend," according to the study summary.

Multi-use trails in Northwest Arkansas were busiest for pedestrians at 6 p.m. on weekdays and 2 p.m. on weekends.

Minkel said there are 20 miles of trails under construction now in Northwest Arkansas. That includes both shared-used paved trails and natural-surface trails.

NW News on 11/16/2015

Upcoming Events