Fort Smith Public Transit - Fort Smith, AR Review

The Fort Smith Public Transit bus system is awesome!  You can ride the bus to anywhere in town from anywhere in town for just one dollar.  That's a great value.  You can't buy gas to get across town for a single dollar.  There are fixed routes that run up and down all the major streets in town in routes that put them passing each stop at least once every hour.  There are signs that will tell you what time the bus passes that stop.  There are also maps available both on the transit website and from the bus drivers that will show you the routes and stop times.  If there's not a bus stop near where you're at or where you want to go, the transit offers demand response service.  You can call ahead and schedule a ride and they will send a bus right to you specially at no extra charge.  There is a free downtown shuttle (It's made to look an old-fashioned street trolley car.) that services the downtown (Garrison, the civic center, the courthouses, the parking garage,etc) area for no charge at all if you call ahead or flag it down. 

The bus is for everyone, young, old, rich, poor, working people, shoppers,students, tourists, every kind of person can feel comfortable on the bus.  The buses are handicapped accessible, even wheel chair accessible.  There are discount fares for the disabled and senior citizens.  Seniors just have to show their medicare card to ride for only 50 cents a trip.   The drivers are helpful and friendly.  If you don't know what bus you need to get on or if the bus has a stop where you're headed,  they will happily help you with your questions.  They make transfers a breeze. The buses are all fairly clean.  Aside from there often being some finger prints on the windows, they are very very clean.  They are safe.  They are nothing like creepy images of big city buses on television with winos passed out on the bus and people getting robbed on the bus and the bus being scary and filthy.  I'm a woman and ride the bus alone and never feel uncomfortable.  Fort Smith buses are calm and nice. 

You'll need to schedule your ride in advance or arrange your schedule around the fixed routes.  The bus that passes by my house arrives at my work like 45 minutes before I need to be at work, but the next one would put me about 15 minutes lates, so I take the earlier bus and have a cup of coffee next door to my store and read the newspaper before I go in to work.  It's really no big deal.  And for trips that I don't have to be someplace at a specific time, like going shopping, it's not even an issue at all.  But if you're going to need to be someplace at a specific time, it takes a bit more thought than just hopping in your own car and going. 

It's much more reliable than the taxi-cab company here in Fort Smith.  If you call for a taxi, you're likely to wait well over an hour, often two hours or more, or the cab could come right away, so you can't even plan to do something while you wait.  You know exactly when the bus is going to be there.  And you'll never have to wait more than an hour at the longest, even if you arrive at the stop just exactly after the bus just left that stop, it will be back by in one hour.  The stops are fixed.  The buses arrive at the stops on time.  The buses are also cleaner than the cabs and cheaper.  It's just short of 6 bucks to take a cab from my house to my job about 2 miles away.  On the bus, it's only 1$ and no worries about when or if it's going to arrive. 

The only real issue I have with the bus is that bus stops running at all after like 11 PM until like 6 in the morning and from like 6PM-11PM there's no fixed route service, you have to call for the bus.  I would prefer for it to keep running it's regular routes at night, but I guess there's not enough demand for it in the evening to make it feasible.  Or maybe people like to be picked up and dropped off right at their destination in the dark instead of waiting at a stop? 

I love the Fort Smith Public Transit.  It's cheap.  It's easy.  It's reliable.