Truly public transportation

William Newsome has a million-dollar smile. From downtown to Bannister Mall, he flashes that smile at every customer from the seat of the bus he drives for the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA).

Tall, lean, and strong, Newsome commands a presence. A driver for the KCATA for five years, he has chosen the Troost route for the past three years. (Drivers can elect to change routes every three months.) Regular riders seem genuinely glad to see him. First-time riders on the Troost bus and those who rarely ride buses meet Newsome and soon find themselves aboard a welcome wagon for public transportation in Kansas City. His attitude toward people and public transportation is what endears him to his riders and helps make his job pleasant.

On a run two days after Christmas, Newsome disarms and comforts several riders who have bad attitudes. He easily quiets and guides a homeless man who is talking to himself, and he cheers a woman traveling with nine children.

"My goodness," he says, looking in his rearview mirror after the woman takes her seat. "Nine kids. She's got to have some backbone, some attitude to be able to move all those kids."

Newsome never calls his bus an instrument of "mass transit" but always refers to his job as public transportation. "Serving the public is what public transportation should do," he says. "We don't have a lot of resources here in Kansas City. KCATA does the best job it can. But in the end, they just don't have enough money to make public transportation work the way it should -- and the way citizens deserve."

Newsome looks up again at Tanya Sharpe, guardian of the nine youngsters. She sits in the middle of the bus, surrounded by the crowd of well-behaved children as a toddler in a stroller is gently rocked in the aisle. Three of the children are hers; the rest are cousins visiting from Topeka. They are on the way to Bannister Mall to return a few ill-fitting Christmas presents.

Sharpe also has a great smile that not only shows she has a good attitude but also a great sense of humor. She doesn't have a car and uses public transportation frequently to get to work, take children to after-school activities, and to shop. "I like the bus," Sharpe says. "It's not so bad. Especially when there isn't a car that would fit all these people anyway."

Across the aisle, Georgia Hunt chats with other riders and watches the cityscape speed by. "I don't have a car," she says without even an inkling of bitterness. "I do everything on the bus, and sometimes it just isn't convenient. But you craft your life around that, which isn't so bad. There are even times I get on the bus just to get out of the house awhile and be around other people.

"Sometimes the bus gets real crowded," Hunt says. "That's because we should have more buses running more often. People mostly don't mind. But I don't shop in my neighborhood (near downtown) because there really isn't anything there, and what's there is so expensive. I get out to Hypermart (87th and I-435) about once a week or two weeks."

Without a car and on a limited income, Connie Stokes has to ride the bus but likes it all the same. "You get to meet and know everybody on the bus, the regular riders anyway," she says. "Many of the others you see and just know there are plenty of nice people out here. Even if I had a car, it wouldn't make sense to drive it all the time."

Stokes is such a regular, long-term bus rider that she's filled with stories about other riders, to whom she waves and calls by name as they get on the bus. "There's Jack," she says. "He has been sick. I know because when I don't see him on the bus for a while, there is something wrong." Stokes even reveals a regular rider's perspective on Newsome. For the past three years, she says, she has spent hours chatting with Newsome when his bus goes through slow periods. "He is really the greatest guy," says Stokes. "Not all bus drivers are like him. Most of them are nice, a few are bad, but he is the best."

Such praise means a lot in a notoriously insufficient KC public transportation system. The bus drivers -- the people like Newsome who meet the public every day -- deal with complaints of not enough service and service that is too slow, too scattered, and too dependent upon the whim of business and political leadership. Moreover, many not using public transportation hold buses in low esteem -- generally those people are not part of the public that patronizes what one devoted rider calls "big blue and white limousines with all of life on board."

But the tide is changing as serious discussions of public transportation take hold in Kansas City. The solutions to the area's transit problems may be just around the corner. According to activists, political leaders, and transit riders, one of the solutions may be the long-enigmatic light rail.