FORT SMITH, Ark. — At Tuesday night’s study session, the Fort Smith Board of Directors got a first look at a new Active Transportation Master Plan, called Move Fort Smith.
“The city of Fort Smith Board of Directors is very supportive of improving mobility conditions here in the city,” said Michael Mings, Mobility Coordinator for the City of Fort Smith. “It's been a year of public engagement, data analysis, scrubbing, Google Earth, looking at all the locations where we could see fit for mobility improvements.”
The plan is defined as “a roadmap towards a more accessible, equitable, and livable Fort Smith, one where streets are safe and inviting for people of all ages and abilities to walk bike roll and run.”
“Safety is definitely the top priority. But just making things more bike friendly and more walkable, I think, goes a long way towards the quality of life for residents here in Fort Smith," Mings said. “People want to be able to walk to school. People want to be able to walk to a park.”
The plan has lots of different recommendations to make spaces in the city more pedestrian friendly in ways like expanding the trail system as well as creating protected bike lanes. They created the roadmap using over 900 responses from residents.
They identified six projects in the plan that they believe are obtainable for mobility improvements. One of them is B Street.
“It has Northside High School on it. It has all of our great flagship restaurants there, and it takes you all the way down to the riverfront and the Riverfront Trail, which is trail that we want to showcase in the city," Mings said. If we could improve access to the school, access to some of our park amenities, then I think that's something that the city could be really proud.”
Mings said the recommendations could take some time to put into place, but they want to have this as a resource to help create change in the years to come.
“We care about creating safe conditions. We care about making a beautiful city to live in that we can all be proud of,” Mings said.
The city Board of Directors will vote to implement the plan at a meeting on Aug. 20.
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