Rock Region METRO Awarded $5.4 Million Competitive USDOT RAISE Grant

Rock Region METRO was awarded $5.4 million – its largest competitive grant award to date – in U.S. Department of Transportation Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) Grant funds to plan a transit-oriented development at the River Cities Travel Center, 310 E. Capitol Ave., Little Rock. This is the first RAISE grant Arkansas’ largest public transit agency has received.

The River Cities Travel Center, opened in 2000 after several years of planning work, is the agency’s sole transit station and the only transit station in Pulaski County serving local intra-city transit service. The station – where 13 of METRO’s 15 local fixed bus routes terminate and which is within the METRO Connect East Little Rock-Riverdale microtransit zone and within two blocks of METRO Streetcar Blue Line – hosts hundreds of passenger trips each day.

METRO kicked off an initial transit-oriented development, or TOD project, in 2019. Despite project progress being hindered by the global coronavirus pandemic, the METRO Board of Directors voted to move forward with planning a public-private partnership for the current River Cities Travel Center location, aimed at keeping transit operations at the heart of new development. Initial and subsequent stakeholder meetings have unveiled a community-supported desire for the transit hub to include entry-level market-rate housing, a health clinic, a child development center, METRO administrative space and a community meeting space, along with ground-level retail. METRO tapped the firms Wendel, Willdan Financial & Economic Consulting Services and Crafton Tull for initial planning activities and grant-writing support.

“METRO not only improved the transit passenger experience but also downtown Little Rock when the travel center was built on the city block between 4th Street & Capitol Avenue and Rock & Cumberland Streets, spurring development along surrounding streets,” said Justin Avery, Rock Region METRO chief executive officer. “Although our team has worked hard to keep the center in a state of good repair, the facility is now almost 25 years old and is ready for re-investment. We are thankful for this planning grant so we can continue engaging our community and optimizing the top stop in the entire METRO system for not only transit riders but also our neighborhood, city and capital city region.”

Next steps will involve more planning work, including a public outreach campaign to inform and shape preliminary concepts into more concrete plans, as well as the development of a request for information for various developers to build upon established market feasibility of various proposals for the project. Close coordination with the City of Little Rock, including incorporating a complete streets plan for campus border streets, will continue. The River Cities Travel Center TOD project is included in the final Little Rock Master Plan (https://www.littlerock.gov/media/22009/dtlr-master-plan_final_june2024-compressed.pdf Strategy 2A on Page 152 of the document, or 85 of the PDF).

A total of 109 projects across the country were awarded a share of $1.32 billion in funding through the 2025 RAISE Round 1 discretionary grants. METRO pursued the grant with the support of U.S. Senators John Boozman and Tom Cotton, Congressman French Hill; Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott; Metroplan Executive Director Casey Covington and Downtown Little Rock Partnership Executive Director Gabe Holmstrom.

“Thanks to President Biden and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, crucial projects that communities across the country have long hoped for are finally becoming a reality,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “With the $1.32 billion in funding we’re announcing today, we’re setting in motion over 100 projects that will make the roads safer, help mitigate the impact of climate change, and ensure that people in communities of all sizes can get where they need to go safely and efficiently.”