KC Star reports on success of Lawrence-JoCo bus
Today’s Star has a front page report on the huge success of Johnson County Transit’s K-10 Connector, a new bus route that connects Lawrence, KS with Johnson County. In its first year the service has seen explosive growth as students and commuters take advantage of the only car-free option to travel between the two cities.
The success of a bus route in such a suburban area show that there is a huge unmet need for better transit service between suburbs, not just suburb-to-downtown commutes. Unfortunately the K-10 Connector is funded with a two-year federal grant. Johnson County will have come up with its own money to keep the service going. It ought to be a no-brainer to include this route in the Smart Moves plan and make it part of a regional transit system. Sadly the Kansas side of the metro doesn’t seem ready to join a regional system any time soon.
Riders give K-10 bus route a thumbs-up
By BRAD COOPER
The Kansas City Star
In a region where buses are shunned for cars, this one isn’t.
With gas prices soaring, riders toting backpacks, briefcases and laptops eagerly line up for the daily bus ride on Kansas 10 between Lawrence and Johnson County.
Many are students. Others are faculty. Some are commuting professionals.
“It gets really packed sometimes,” said Steve Sobczak, a Kansas City, Kan., resident who has been a rider on the route since its inception.
A little more than a year old, the route — known as the K-10 Connector — is the hottest in the metro area. Ridership has more than doubled in a year. Only the downtown rapid bus line known as MAX comes close to such a high-profile explosion in ridership.
An ironic outgrowth of a highway study, the K-10 Connector is tapping a demand for transit that has been eyed for years. And it could be a lesson for building bus ridership in other parts of the metro area.
It demonstrates what can happen when you identify popular destination centers and where the people are who want to get there, transportation planners say.
Then, if it’s fast and convenient, people will ride.
“The lesson is, you have to do some homework behind the services you’re planning,” said Mell Henderson, director of transportation for the Mid-America Regional Council.
Transportation planners did that three years ago when they explored the market along the K-10 corridor.
They came up with a route that fills a niche market connecting two cities that share students and workers.
They found that about 8,000 people commute to work between Douglas and Johnson counties each day, and 1,300 Johnson County Community College students call Douglas County home.
The study, done when gasoline was significantly cheaper, is proving to be prophetic. And now a route designed with students in mind is serving working commuters as well.
It’s not uncommon for commuters to rely on their co-workers to pick them up and then drop them off at the community college so they can catch the bus back to Lawrence.
Others drive to Johnson County on Monday, leave their vehicles at the community college after the workday, and take the bus between Lawrence and Overland Park all week. On Friday, they drive home.
“They could double the ridership if they added a few more buses and changed the route a little bit,” said Robert Priest, who takes the bus to his job at Honeywell in Olathe.
Priest is among those who park at the community college so they can take the bus.
“The focus was for the students, but it’s very advantageous for the commuter who works here but lives in Lawrence,” Priest said.
The number of boardings on the route has more than doubled during the first part of this year, and there’s little mystery why.
“The final incentive was the price of gas,” said Casey Shook, who just started using the bus a week ago to get to his architecture job at Black & Veatch.
From February to April, the number of trips increased to 27,942, compared with 13,721 during the same period last year. Last month, the bus averaged 499 rider trips a day. The first month the route started, January 2007, it averaged 225 rider trips a day.
Already, requests have come in for the bus to stop in De Soto and Eudora. But Johnson County transit officials say making those intermediate stops could diminish the K-10 express service.
“This route is as direct as we can make it,” said Chuck Ferguson, Johnson County’s deputy transportation director. “When people get on the bus, they feel that for the majority of the bus ride they are expressing on the highway just like they would do if they were driving.”
Transit planners say the route has unique aspects that might be hard to duplicate in other parts of the metro area:
•The route covers 34 miles and makes only five stops. Riders say the route saves them wads of cash in gas money. The fare is $2.50 a trip.
“It’s a good price for what you get,” said biology student Katie Howard.
•The route connects three colleges with thousands of students: Johnson County Community College, the University of Kansas’ Edwards Campus in Overland Park and KU’s main campus in Lawrence.
•Riders see the bus line as competitive with a car in terms of cost and convenience.
Mike Santos rides the bus daily to his job as an assistant city attorney at Overland Park City Hall. He doesn’t think he loses any expediency leaving his car behind.
“If you drive the whole way, you have to work your way through all the stoplights and traffic in Overland Park and all the stoplights and traffic in Lawrence,” Santos said.
There are outstanding issues, however. Some riders complain about the lack of good bus connections once they arrive in Johnson County.
“It’s getting from here to anywhere else that’s the problem because it’s so decentralized,” said Shook as he prepared to board the bus outside the community college.
Others complain about gaps in service. The buses generally run an hour apart except at midday, when they’re two hours apart.
And then there’s the crowding. Some riders say the bus is popular enough that it can be cramped at times.
Ferguson acknowledges those issues and said he would love to address them but is limited by money.
The K-10 service costs $364,000 a year, of which $200,000 comes from a federal grant that runs out in 2009. After that, Johnson County will have to find a way to sustain the service.
“I can’t throw out the kind of service that would be more supportive of that system, although that is in our plan for the future,” he said.
The early success of the K-10 Connector is instructive for how transit planners across the region might fill unmet demand for bus service.
“We know there is untapped demand in other parts of the community as well. It’s just having to finance it to put the service out there,” said Dick Jarrold, chief engineer for the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority.
Some of those markets include connecting the rapidly developing Shoal Creek area in the Northland to downtown. Another possibility might be service to the jobs at the freight center and intermodal hub at the former Richards-Gebaur Airport.
Then there are the ongoing efforts to find a way to get people to jobs from downtown Kansas City, Kan., out to the Village West retail complex in western Wyandotte County.
Jarrold agrees that the K-10 route has unique features, but he thinks the lessons learned could be applied to transit in some untapped markets.
THE BUS BASICS
Cost: Riding the bus route costs $2.50 one way. A 10-ride pass is available for $15. Passes can be purchased from the bus driver or by writing to Johnson County Transit, 1701 W. 56 Highway, Olathe, KS 66061.
Schedule: Buses generally run about every hour during peak periods early in the morning and in late afternoon during the workweek. Service starts about 6:30 a.m.
Stops: North entrance of Carlsen Center at Johnson County Community College, KU Edwards Campus, and in Lawrence at Clinton and Crestline, 19th and Naismith, and Haskell University, north of the stadium.
