Yes, Knoxville does have a public transportation system—but how good is it? And who uses it?
by Joe Tarr
Cliff Reynolds maneuvers a large teal van left off Keowee Avenue onto Southgate Road, driving slowly past the elegant houses of Sequoyah Hills. His load is light for this sunny mid-morning—a mere two passengers.
An elderly woman sits at the front, talking with Reynolds about faith in the Lord, about how if you trust Him, He will take care of you.
During the ride through this affluent neighborhood, no one stands along the street waving a hand for a ride on Knoxville's public bus system.
And you have to wonder, who rides this bus? In fact, it is a low ridership route. But many depend on it. Every weekday, a number of women climb on downtown and ride to their jobs as maids and domestic help. Even some Sequoyah Hills residents—whom you would imagine cruising to work in sporty BMWs or fat, cushy Range Rovers—will commute downtown via the Sequoyah Hills line.
As Reynolds comes to the end of the route, just past the Western Hills Plaza on Kingston Pike, there is no one waiting to climb on board. But Reynolds, an amiable driver who clearly loves his job, says that he has to wait a few minutes before making the return trip.
"A day off without pay if I leave here before 10:33," he says. "People depend on these buses."
At the appointed time, Reynolds shifts the van into gear and heads back down Kingston Pike. His bus is empty.
Knoxville once had perhaps the best public transportation system in the South. Today, cars rule the city. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a need for buses, or that public transportation is obsolete. Knoxville Area Transit's fleet of 80 orange and teal buses gives some 6,200 rides a day, and 1.7 million a year.
Who are the people that make up this tiny sub-culture of Knoxville, and why do they take the bus? What is it like to navigate the city with a bus schedule and a dollar?
Riding the bus isn't as inconvenient as it seems to the legions of motorized citizens. But public transportation has fallen far from its glory days in the '20s and '30s. How does it fit into the city's future?
Wheels Go 'Round
The corner of Summer Place and Walnut Street is the main terminus for almost all 23 routes run by Knoxville Area Transit, or KAT. With $1 you can catch rides from here to Halls, Mechanicsville, Cedar Bluff, West Town Mall, Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, Island Home Avenue, and Chapman Highway, among many others. Routes generally run every half-hour or hour.
Buses line the street here, as fresh drivers start work and others wait for the designated departure time. Their diesel engines loudly moan. A few dozen people wait for their buses, pacing the sidewalk or simply sitting, staring vacantly ahead of them.
"My car broke down," says Shanna Page, while she waits for a ride to work in Lonsdale. She has been riding the bus system for only a week.
"It isn't bad. It gets you where you want to go. But sometimes, I want to get in my car and go," she says.
When you ride the bus, you get used to waiting. It's not that the buses are chronically late, but you must sacrifice convenience.
Pat Readus quickly discovered this last week.
"This is my first day riding, and I've been waiting an hour," says the UT student. She had just moved off campus out west. The free trolley that took her to Summer and Walnut was a bit late. She missed the bus home and had to wait for the next.
Some say the waiting has gotten longer and the system more inconvenient.
"Some places you're working at, you can't even get a bus to," says Robert Jonson, as he waits for a bus home. "I lost a job because I couldn't get there early enough. The earliest bus was 8 o'clock and I had to be there earlier than that."
Charles Thomas, a Knoxville attorney and member of KAT's Citizens Advisory Board, rides the bus by choice, not necessity. He admits that it takes longer to get to work.
"It's not an unpleasant time. In fact, I kind of look forward to it," he says. "I can actually do work on the bus. People who ride the bus, almost across the board, know everyone else who rides their bus. It becomes almost a little community. If you don't normally ride the bus, they notice."
But even those who like the bus say they wish it ran more often and later. Some routes begin last runs just after 5 p.m., and none run past 8 p.m. There is no service on Sundays.
Take a gander at KAT's finances, and you begin to understand why. Of its $8 million budget, 57 percent comes from the city coffers, 13 percent from the state, and 10 percent from the federal government. Fares bring in only about 20 percent of the operating budget, says Belinda Woodiel, KAT marketing manager.
"We don't have the money to run the routes later. I've heard stories from drivers about how during the World's Fair, the buses would run until 11 at night," Woodiel says. "We can't afford to do that now. But that's always been a big issue with us: how can we run the service later?"
Best in the South
Dressed in white pants and shirt, a 78-year-old woman rests underneath one of the shelters at Summer and Walnut. The woman, who would not give her name, says she moved to Knoxville from Chicago some 20 years ago and has always used mass transportation. Clutching her clunky white leather purse on her lap, the woman becomes quite passionate when asked what she thinks of Knoxville's bus system.
"People need to understand that when you have good public transportation, your city becomes cosmopolitan," she says. "In a big city, do you think only the poor ride the buses? The wealthy ride the buses too. Here they think it's demeaning to ride the bus."
Knoxville's bus system may not seem like much to any big-city dweller, but there was a time when public transportation here was among the country's most progressive.
The city's first street trolley line began operating in April 1876 over Gay Street between Main and Jackson avenues, according to Edwin P. Patton in the Knoxville history compendium Heart of the Valley. It was pulled by mules, and the driver would have to switch them to the other end of the trolley to go back down the street.
In May 1890, the city's first electric trolley began operating. After a series of political and courtroom battles between competing trolley companies, the city's trolley system came under the control of one company in 1898.
The system blossomed, covering 53 miles around the city and suburbs. In 1923, the trolleys gave a record 19.6 million rides.
As cars became more common in the early '30s, trolley service began to decline, though it wasn't always because of lack of ridership, Patton notes.
Knoxville's leaders, apparently embarrassed by its old-fashioned system and eager to make its streets wider and more car friendly, did much to eradicate the trolleys. The city encouraged, and sometimes forced, the trolley company to replace lines with modern buses. However, a well-maintained core trolley system survived until after World War II. In 1943, some 10.5 million people rode the trolleys (which made up only a third of the system), while another 12.9 million rode the adjoining bus lines, according to Patton. The city shut down all trolley lines in 1947.
Knoxville's bus lines continued to be operated by a private company until 1967, when the owner decided he could no longer make a profit and put the company up for sale. Rather than lose its public transportation, the city bought the system. The last year it made a profit was 1970.
Today, KAT runs 23 routes over 356 miles. Ironically, Knoxville is trying to bring back a semblance of the trolley system it eradicated 50 years ago. In 1987, it began running two "trolley" lines—gas-powered, rubber-wheel buses that are modeled after old-style trolley cars.
City officials hope to expand on this. They are starting a $50 million program (funded 80 percent by the federal government) to purchase 22 battery-powered trolley buses and start a light rail system. The idea is to link all the downtown area's major attractions.
Does the Bus Come Soon?
Stranded way out west on the side of Kingston Pike, you can get an idea of what it means to be carless in Knoxville.
There are no sidewalks. You must walk on the side of the road or across plaza lawns and parking lots, maneuvering through the occasional shrubs separating shopping strips.
You hardly notice the bus stop sign stuck in the ground, lost amid the commercial glitter. You have no schedule, but hopefully a bus will be here soon.
Thousands of cars zip by on the sticky hot asphalt. Faces in the cars crook to the side of the road to where you are leaning against a street light. You infer amusement, and sometimes sympathy, in their eyes, but maybe they don't even see you.
After a half-hour you see the first bus. But it is going the wrong way. Soon, 45 minutes have gone.
Suddenly, you are not alone. Two workers from a nearby restaurant join you in the hot sun to wait. Latino men carrying bags of groceries walk up the side of the road and ask, "Does the bus come soon?"
KAT has not done any surveys to figure out the demographics of its riders or find out why they ride. Most of those interviewed echoed the comments of a man riding the Broadway line one morning: "Transportation—that's about it. It's the only way for me and my wife to get around."
"In our society if you don't have a car it's almost like having your legs cut off," Thomas says.
When you're so accustomed to hopping in a car every day, it can be a little startling to realize that not every place is as addicted to cars as the United States.
When Thomas was in college, he took a year off to live in Dublin and travel around Europe. There, people will walk or take public transportation to the pub or a show.
"You begin to understand that maintaining this 2-ton piece of steel, rubber and grease is really something you don't want to do," Thomas says.
KAT promotes its services to a number of different people: seniors, college students, and school children—people who may well depend on it. It also pitches its services to commuters, but that has not been an easy sell. The express bus to Cedar Bluff gave just 200 rides in July.
"Some people say, 'I know it's out there, I just don't want to take it.' And other people say, 'I had no idea it's out there,'" Woodiel says.
Thomas champions Knoxville's bus system, as well as the construction and use of greenways and bike trails. He still has a car, but takes the bus to work about half the time. He says the city can't keep heading in the same direction.
"Using the automobile and building more roads has to end at some point, before we pave over everything," he says.
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