Beat the Broadway Bridge Blues with Transit!

Bummer News Update as of Thursday evening, Sept. 29: The free “streetcar shuttle” will not be operating during peak hours while the Broadway Bridge project is underway. City officials think it is negatively impacting traffic. The good news is that every bus that travels south through Argenta down Maple is a shuttle of sorts when you get on at one of the stops in the neighborhood and hop off at the first stop on the Little Rock side, which is right in front of Arkansas Business and across from the convention center.

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We’ve been planning for what we’re calling “B Day” (Wednesday, Sept. 28, 10 a.m., when the Broadway Bridge closes for six months to be replaced), for some time now. Since 2013, to be exact. That’s when we moved the five local fixed routes that were routed across the Broadway Bridge to carry passengers from North Little Rock to Little Rock to the Main Street Bridge in anticipation of the bridge replacement project. We also added time to the route schedules to accommodate the anticipated traffic demands related to the bridge construction.

Unfortunately, we did not have the funding for a proposed plan designed by the Rock Region METRO staff to add more frequent bus service from North Little Rock to Little Rock during peak hours throughout the Broadway Bridge reconstruction project.

The good news? We have seven routes that cross the Arkansas River (Route 4 Levy/Amboy, Route 7 Shorter College, Route 10 McCain Mall, Route 13 Pulaski Technical College, Route 18 McAlmont, Route 26 Maumelle/Oak Grove Express and Route 36 Jacksonville/Sherwood Express), and we have created this handy front-and-back “how to” flier that compiles information you can find right here at rrmetro.org into a “cheat sheet” of sorts. Learn how to plan your trip, check schedules and pay your fare, and then sit back, relax and use our free WiFi while you let the professionals do the driving!