The Johnson County Commission has made a $2.5 million emergency appropriation to deal with overcrowding on The JO bus system.  The money will buy seven used buses, plus help offest the skyrocketing cost of diesel fuel.  Why used buses?  Largely because unprecedented national demand is leading to two year waits for new buses.  The additional JO buses should hit the streets in February.

Johnson County joins other suburbs like Lee’s Summit, Liberty, and Blue Springs that are dealing soaring bus ridership and limited local funding.  Transit officials had asked for $7 million, but the Commission balked at committing that much money the bus system. Instead, the county plans to study future transit needs during 2009.

Johnson County makes $2.45 million emergency appropriation to beef up bus system.

Posted on Thu, Nov. 06, 2008

Johnson County makes $2.45 million emergency appropriation to beef up bus system By FINN BULLERS

The Kansas City Star

Johnson County commissioners Thursday made a $2.45 million emergency appropriation to beef up the county bus fleet, with ridership at a record high.Commissioners unanimously agreed it was critical to get more buses on the road as soon as possible and expand operating hours by 20 percent.

A fleet of seven used vehicles could be deployed by Feb. 1 to meet the standing-room crowds being seen on several county bus routes. The expenditure is $1.4 million for the buses and a little more than $1 million to operate them.

Nowhere is the need more evident than on the popular K-10 Connector route to Lawrence. Daily ridership there has decreased over the last six weeks, officials said, because riders have been turned off by buses that are crowded or late.

Riders have been turned away and then are loath to use the system again, Transportation Director Alice Amrein told commissioners Thursday.

Ridership systemwide is up 39 percent over last year. Amrein said she expected to end the year at 540,000 transit trips, up from 389,279 last year.

Since January, the number of requests for additional service and complaints of overcrowding and service delays have kept pace with the ridership spikes, Amrein said.

“We are now in a position that we cannot effectively respond to the demand for service or provide the quality of service that is expected by our riders,” she wrote in a memo to commissioners. “This issue has been and continues to be a challenge, with staff juggling multiple priorities in an effort to meet and address high service expectations.”

In June, transit officials submitted their initial request for $7.1 million for service expansion for The JO and The JO-Special Edition. But that was too big a bite for commissioners, who said they wanted to develop a long-range transit plan before making such a major investment. That plan — and a way to pay for it — should begin to develop in the first quarter of next year.

Meanwhile, Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser is looking at a regional transit plan, but only for the Missouri side where taxing authority is in place.

Johnson County is not prepared for light rail, Annabeth Surbaugh, Johnson County Commission chairman, said Thursday.

“We don’t have the density to support light rail in Johnson County,” Surbaugh said.

She said she would like to see the area consider expanded rapid-transit bus routes that were less contentious and could be moved as needs changed.

Greater housing density is what officials now say is necessary before light rail is to become a serious talking point in Johnson County.

“And expanded bus lines can help increase density,” Surbaugh said.