A New American Town - Bentonville, Arkansas

Bentonville Moves Coalition’s Push for Safe, Connected Streets

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We sit down with Jessica Pearson of the Bentonville Moves Coalition to map out how a bold goal—30 miles of safe, connected routes in three years—turned biking and walking into everyday options for getting to school, work, and everywhere in between. Jessica shares how the city fast‑tracked a 90‑mile master plan, why protected bike lanes and bike boxes reduce friction for everyone on the road, and how celebration—through ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings—keeps community and leaders aligned around progress.

E‑bikes and rebates help flatten hills and tame summer heat, while “heels on wheels” and “blazers on bikes” spotlight the shift from sport to transport—plain clothes, normal trips, fewer car lines, and more neighborly moments at the bike box. With Arkansas Moves launching soon, Jessica lays out a repeatable playbook any city can use: set clear goals, build safe infrastructure, educate riders and employers, and celebrate wins that bring people along. Subscribe, share with a friend who hates traffic, and leave a review with the one change that would get you riding to your next errand.

Learn more: Bentonville Moves Coalition

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Nat Ross:

Welcome to the bike edition of a New American Town brought to you by Visit Bentonville. I'm your host, Nat Ross. As someone who's made Bentonville home and spent countless hours on the bike and these trails, I'm excited to share the stories of the people building our cycling community. Today we're sitting down with Jessica Pearson of the Bentonville Moves Coalition. Jessica, here we go. Exciting guest today in the studio. Jessica Pearson. Welcome. Bentonville Moves Coalition. Tell us about it, and then we're going to dive into your history and everything that talks about it.

Jessica Pearson :

Awesome. Thank you, Nat. I'm really grateful to be here and to share, you know, the evolution of the coalition. It uh began with Runway Group and Tom Walton before I even lived in Northwest Arkansas. But the timing of my move here actually coincided with their hiring of a coalition manager and dedicated individual to see the city of Bentonville through the 30 miles and three-year goal, which we just celebrated last month here in Bentonville.

Nat Ross:

Congratulations.

Jessica Pearson :

Thank you very much. Huge achievement. So looking back in the history of the coalition, in 2021, the city of Bentonville went through a consultant planning process to identify how to create a safe and connected active mobility network in Bentonville. And for those unfamiliar with that term active mobility, that is a shared bike lane, a shared use path, a greenway, a protected bike lane. There's all sorts of ways that individuals can navigate our city with or without the use of a car. And the active mobility networks really provide opportunities for our residents and visitors to choose a bicycle or foot for not just recreation, but also purpose.

Nat Ross:

Excellent. Because I think that's the important piece for folks to uh grab on is the accessibility that your coalition has been opening up, um, and including down to the workforce, including um, we'll talk about um bike to school week, we'll talk about kind of the different modes of this transportation um and the channels. But let's let's talk a little bit about your history and um how you um this is the perfect fit for you, but how you ended up in this role. So a little bit of your background, the passions, your work, how it all ties into this.

Jessica Pearson :

Sure. So cycling has always been um central to my life. I I I love it, I live it, I breathe it, as do many in this community. I'm from Springfield, Missouri. I spent the past 40 years there. I did my first hundred-mile bike ride when I was 12 years old. I, you know, took a break for a few years. I was a college athlete, and then um, you know, later in life returned to that competitive side and that competitive nature that I have. And this bicycle is what has allowed me to continue to compete, uh, recreate, and now um just enjoy my day-to-day life here in Bentonville. I, prior to relocating here, was the managing director of a nonprofit mountain bike trail development company in Springfield, Missouri, Trail Spring. And um it was pretty serendipitous, but I had just completed a uh 20-mile loop of new mountain bike trail in Springfield. Sure. The first professionally built trail in Springfield on public property. And so similarly, uh timeframe three years, mileage goal 20 miles, uh, multiple entities, uh, both City and Missouri Department of Transportation involved because of the location of the project, which segued perfectly into this opportunity here. And like many, I didn't move here with a position in mind or a job lined up. I just knew I wanted to be in Northwest Arkansas, and I had confidence that by relocating here, an opportunity would present itself. And it did. And the rest has been history. So back to that bike and pedestrian master plan that the city of Bentonville adopted in 2021, it identified 90 miles of new infrastructure that would be needed for the city of Bentonville to have a safe and reliable active mobility network. Prior to the coalition's formation, the rate of implementation for new infrastructure was one mile per year. So if we continued at that rate 90 years down the road, we may or may not have uh an active mobility network in place. Um, and obviously there was a need to accelerate that and make sure that that plan didn't just get shelved on some digital shelf on the city's website. And how do we do that? Um we keep that plan top of mind, both from the top down with our city leadership, our elected officials, city staff, but also from the bottom up with our community members, the families that interact here on the daily in our community. And we are uniquely situated here in Bentonville, being the mountain bike capital of the world and having such a tremendous recreational presence and usership that think of the impact we could make if those that choose to ride recreationally, once or twice a year, even, chose to hop on their bike to get to work or school or a restaurant. Um everyone's feeling the growth here in Bensonville. And not just with new residents and visitors, but also those commuting in every day. Um, our daytime population um more than doubles. And we simply don't have enough space to build enough infrastructure to accommodate that much vehicular traffic. So anyone who makes a choice to hop on a bike on the daily is addressing that infrastructure strain. And they don't have to do it. We're not anti-car, we're not pro-bike, we're pro-infrastructure, we're pro-choice, choice of transportation. And we just want people to have options on how they move about Bentonville. We want those options to be safe and reliable.

Nat Ross:

Well, you sure are making them safe and um and extremely accessible. But also talk about the education because you guys are really on the forefront of the movement, even groundbreaking, even trail breaking when we're doing um hard surface connectivities. Um, but there are let's let's dive into the back to school and the riding to school piece because you see so many folks that have adopted that mode of transportation um here around town, and it's it's going to start being more so like over the next couple of years.

Jessica Pearson :

Absolutely. So the Bentonville Moves Coalition supports the Bentonville School District in their bike to school weeks, which occur in the spring and the fall. And of course, students and staff and bike trains occur year round, but there's really a concentrated effort every April and October, where all of the students and staff, um, weather permitting, are making an effort to hop into a bike train to recruit new riders, to train new ride leads and ride sweeps. Um, and even if there's not an opportunity, of course, not every child that attends Pittonville Public Schools has a safe route to school. Um, so there's a lot of programming that we support in the school and in the classroom that allows those students and kiddos who can't ride to and from school to still feel a part of bike to school week. And those have continued to grow in popularity and participation year over year. Um, we had over 800 students participate in our most recent bike to school week. Yeah, super incredible. And all of the schools are on board. Each school has a local bike champion, um, which is part of the PTO. And the principals and assistant principals support the counts and reporting so that we can really celebrate these wins and draw attention to the opportunity there is for students to safely and reliably choose an alternative means to get to school. And I know there are plenty of parents out there that would be more than happy to avoid car lines, myself being one of them.

Nat Ross:

No kidding.

Jessica Pearson :

Yeah.

Nat Ross:

Um, the the other piece would be kind of like that final mile, and you have the workforce here and a lot of the offices that um there's new encouragement and incentives to ride bikes to work as opposed to driving all the time in that commute element by bike or by um foot or alternative transportation. So fill us in on the successes that you guys have had, the coalition with um the workforce and people um commuting to work um in it other than driving their car or.

Jessica Pearson :

Yeah. Uh this past year, the Bentonville Chamber of Commerce came on board and um teamed up with us for Bike to School Week and launch bike to work week. And that has been a great success. And conjunction with that, the coalition in the chamber have been co-hosting bicycle-friendly business workshops. Um, we're here encouraging all of these residents to hop on a bike to get to work. But there is an opportunity as well to educate and bring the employers on board on how do you accommodate for an employee who's riding in on bikes? How can we encourage that? And that, you know, could be something as simple as a guaranteed ride home. If someone comes in on a bike and the weather doesn't cooperate for their commute home, having having a guaranteed ride home might give someone that confidence to commute in by work, flexible start and leave times. There's all sorts of little things and incentives that employers can offer that will maybe be one less barrier to an individual in our community deciding whether or not to ride their bike to work. And so it goes beyond just bike racks and things like that. And I think when you think of a bicycle-friendly business, most people think, okay, a business that is accommodating of their patrons, not necessarily their employees. And so we decided to invite in leaders of different businesses around Bentonville to a bicycle-friendly business workshop. And in that workshop, we walked them through the bicycle-friendly business application from the League of American Bicyclists, and we had 100% of our workshop attendees come out with week certifications, which launched Bentonville into the top 10 in the nation for bicycle-friendly businesses. And you know what? We could easily be number one. So we're going to continue to offer this as a free resource to any business leaders, business owners in our community. If you, if you are a staff of a business, you don't even have to be the owner and just want to attend and maybe educate your employer on how they can be more bicycle-friendly. We welcome that as well. And then, of course, that ties in directly to what Walmart Moves Hub and Ride to Work Wednesday. So you think there's so many different groups here that are encouraging individuals to choose a bike over a car on occasion. Um, and so how do we make that easier and more accessible for our residents to make that choice? The e-bike rebate program has been huge as well in terms of removing barriers. Um, we have all four seasons here, and we've got some hills. And there are people who, including myself, on some days, don't really want to arrive to work full sweat. Absolutely. And if I've got a throttle on my e-bike, I'm gonna be using that in the hot summer months and the rainy, cool days of spring and fall. So um it's all about removing barriers, and those barriers can be infrastructure, which we're mainly focused on, but there are other areas that are considered barriers too, and that can be um, you know, the infrastructure at your place of business or the the bike you choose to ride. And so we support all of those efforts in tandem to try to advance the active mobility network in Bentonville.

Nat Ross:

You have really been advancing it, Jessica. So if you look at just the your Instagram page for Bentonville Moves Coalition, the action that you guys put up, the incentives and the programming in general, it's insane. So where does someone go to visit Instagram?

Jessica Pearson :

What's the official site for Bensonville Moves Coalition? Um, that will be changing. I think maybe now's a good time to make a little announcement. But yeah, the coalition is growing. And um, first of the year, we're going to launch the Arkansas Moves Coalition, which means that all of these cities that have been kind of admiring our work from afar and coming to me and saying, we would love a coalition in Bella Vista or Sinterton or you know, you name it, name any Arkansas city. This formula works and it's replible. And I would love to see us grow into other communities and excited to share that we're gonna have the opportunity. So um Ventonville Moves Coalition for now. Uh, but after the first of the year, you can start looking for Arkansas moves, um, and we'll transition everything over to that.

Nat Ross:

Talk about a success story. So it's great the trajectory and the amount of people riding bikes, but they're safe while they're riding in town too. So um, what is the biggest um victory for you as you um are in the community daily? Um, what when you just feel the reward or just that warm, fuzzy feeling, what is it um that gets you um excited about your job and the process in general of um commuting by bike or just alternative transportation?

Jessica Pearson :

Yeah, this might seem silly to some, but um seeing different outfits on bikes. So a lot of people think of cyclists as these spandex clad individuals um in our roadways. And I love it when I see someone with heels on wheels, so much so that I created my own little heels on wheels social every first Thursday of the month. So I'm gonna do a little personal plug there too. If you're uh interested in fashion on two wheels, join me at Blake Street House, four o'clock, first Thursday of each month. We also welcome blazers on bikes. So choose your choose your high fashion. Um, the only requisite is you show up on two wheels. But that's really it. Just seeing more and more families out on bikes, in plain clothes, seeing more and more blazers and plain clothes on bikes just excites me because that represents to me a cultural cultural shift to a commuting culture. And we've done several study tours over the years to the Netherlands, most recently to Switzerland. And it always is very um exciting to me. When you start to see plain clothes on bikes, that really does start to indicate a cultural shift occurring.

Nat Ross:

Absolutely.

Jessica Pearson :

Yeah.

Nat Ross:

Yeah. And I think um the biggest takeaway that this community can gather from all this is um what the purpose is um for the showing up to work, excited, already refreshed. Um, that you're seeing a lot less of the aggravations of the daily traffic. The the traffic's increased, but this is an easy way to um bypass that on a personal journey for folks, or others that are willing to explore a different way to get to work or to school or to get around.

Jessica Pearson :

You know what I really love about pulling up to the bike box on Third Street is interacting with other cyclists in that bike box for those brief moments. Those are casual interactions, connections that can occur that inside your metal box car are not occurring, right? Yeah.

Nat Ross:

And the bike box is actually um you could fit three to four people in the bike box, and it's your safe way to get across the intersection. So and a bike box. So so um on Third Street, the easy one would be stride across from like if you're looking across the street from Archie's, yeah, there's a green right when you would pull up to a big white lane, um, a box, an actual box with cyclist icons in it. And Jessica, that's for rider safety.

Jessica Pearson :

That is for rider safety and visibility. Um, and we have a little video on our website that demonstrates how to use the bike box because that is a newer infrastructure idea here that we've introduced. And I just really want to give credit to the city of Bentonville and our leadership for yeah, putting in protected bike lanes, putting in bike boxes, taking those risks. And I say risks because that's new and that's gonna be sometimes uncomfortable and cause some fear and cause some friction in the short term. But they're willing to take that chance and demonstrate, we call those demonstration projects, okay, that this infrastructure works and it's not scary and it is safe. And look, it reduces friction and gives clarity to where everyone belongs on the road. You know, the coalition's work is really grassroots and uh community driven. And a big part of that is encouraging positive interactions with our elected leaders and our city staff. And one of the ways that we are able to do that and even to provide the opportunity for those interactions with our elected leaders and city staff is through ribbon cuttings and brown groundbreakings. So anytime there's an investment in new active mobility infrastructure, we will host an event both at the beginning of that project and at the conclusion of that project to celebrate that investment. Um, you know, a lot of our elected leaders hear if someone has a negative opinion about something. And our goal is really for every negative opinion about active mobility infrastructure, for our leadership to know that there's hundreds of community members that support and want to see this investment. And so much so that they're willing to show up and say thank you and celebrate and express gratitude when those investments are being made. And so those events have continued to grow, and we have just such a consistent and diverse crowd of coalition membership that comes out to celebrate that, and it's beautiful.

Nat Ross:

I could I can only imagine. So continue the good work and we look forward to more openings and uh more greenway connectivity.

Jessica Pearson :

Yeah, thank you so much.

Nat Ross:

Whether you're visiting Bentonville or you're planning your next trip, visit Bentonville is here to keep you in connection with what's happening. I'm gonna do that again. Whether you're visiting Bentonville or you call this place home, Visit Bentonville is here to keep you in connection with what's happening with our new American town. Check the show notes, links to our website. And social channels. We'll see you next time.