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New Kansas City, Mo., Bus Service Promises Rapid Without the Rail

Posted on: Monday, 25 July 2005, 21:00 CDT

Jul. 23--Kansas City will introduce a new era of mass transit Sunday morning with a snazzy bus line that could be as close to light rail as the area ever gets.

The system will run faster, use designated lanes and make fewer stops. It will have stations with displays showing when the next bus arrives. And it can keep a traffic signal from turning red.

"It's like light rail on rubber tires," said Greg Lever, executive director of the nonprofit Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance.

The Metro Area Express, known in short as MAX, is a bus line that could become a model for mass transit in the metropolitan area. It begins at 5:02 a.m. Sunday. Fare is a buck, although the first week of service will be free.

The goal is to attract passengers to a bus system that last year saw ridership drop to its lowest level in more than 30 years. In 1980 the transit authority had a weekday ridership average of 93,100. Last year it was 43,894.

"We felt we had to come up with a more marketable system, something that would be appealing to our current users and to people who hadn't been on a bus in 30 years," said Mark Huffer, general manager for the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority.

In the aftermath of failed attempts to win support for light rail, the answer is MAX, a $21 million bus line that will run from the River Market to the Country Club Plaza. The new line, funded mostly with federal money, could cut travel time by as much 25 percent.

The rapid bus route will extend along a 5½-mile stretch of one of the busiest corridors of the city, where there are an estimated 150,000 jobs.

The MAX replaces the No. 56 Country Club route, which has about 3,100 riders a day. The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority hopes to increase daily ridership on the route to 4,000 within the first year of operation.

The success of the rapid bus line will be scrutinized because it figures prominently in a regional transit plan designed to connect the seven-county area. A rapid bus line on Interstate 35 is an option being considered for linking Kansas City to suburban Johnson County.

The new line has piqued the interest of people who work and live in downtown.

"I'm definitely going to check it out," said lawyer Steven Hann, who lives in the River Market area and takes a bus to work at Crown Center.

Bus rapid transit is catching on across the country, from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh. Instead of investing heavy sums in new railways for commuters, cities are finding they can spend less money on rapid bus lines that provide similar levels of service.

"Bus rapid transit is filling the gap between regular urban bus service and a rail line that has to be established with immense infrastructure," said Lurae Stuart, a bus transit specialist for the American Public Transportation Association in Washington.

As of last year, at least 33 cities were planning rapid bus lines, in addition to nine other cities that had started one.

Studies by the federal government show that in many cases, the new bus lines increase ridership, although they do siphon passengers from existing routes.

Bus rapid transit is hard to define, because many cities employ it differently. At a minimum, it generally involves bus service that is faster than what is currently offered and, at most, includes lanes that are segregated from regular traffic.

The MAX bus lanes will not be separated by a wall or a grade in the road as in other cities, something studies said could diminish the speed of the service.

The current bus route that MAX will replace makes 40 stops and takes about 24 minutes. The new rapid line, with 19 stops, is expected to take about 18 minutes to get to the Plaza from downtown.

The new system also features so-called "stations," which will be advertised with 17-foot tall markers. Each stop will have an electronic message board telling passengers when the next bus is to arrive.

Critics have argued that the bus will be slowed by a circuitous route that it will follow through downtown before getting out on Main Street.

Huffer, the transit authority's general manager, disagreed.

"There's no question we could get the bus from the River Market to the Plaza quicker if we ran a straight line," he said. "We think we significantly diminish the attractiveness of this service to people if they have to walk five or six blocks in whatever weather to catch that route."

WHAT MAKES MAX DIFFERENT:

--The bus will run in designated lanes during peak traffic hours.

--The bus can hold a light green for seven or eight seconds.

--The route will have 21 fewer stops.

--Stops will have electronic signs indicating when the next bus will arrive.

--The bus will run about four to five miles per hour faster than the existing service

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri)

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