Shawnoahia Farr sits on a bench at a bus stop, her face a snarl. She has an appointment at KU Medical Center, and she's behind schedule.
Farr lives less than five miles from the hospital. If she owned a car, the trip would take minutes. Farr, however, relies on public transportation, which means delays, transfers and the company of noisy street philosophers.
Forty-five minutes after walking out her front door, Farr is stuck at the transit center at 39th Street and Troost, waiting for a westbound bus that runs three times an hour at midday. The bus she picked up near her home was late, she says, causing her to miss the connection to KU Med she wanted.
A frequent rider, Farr says the bus company, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, has room to improve. "They're some sloppy-ass operators," she says.
Farr's blunt opinion is pretty common. The ATA does not rank among the city's most admired institutions. Praise for the agency tops out with the grudging acknowledgement that it's probably doing the best it can. Ron McLinden, a member of the grassroots Transit Action Network, says the ATA has been "pretty frugal" with its resources, the bureaucratic equivalent of being said to have a nice personality.
The ATA's homeliness makes it easy to assume that it's run by a bunch of people who couldn't cut it at Greyhound. (Diminutive and a lackluster public speaker, ATA General Manager Mark Huffer doesn't leave a room with the impression that he's a dynamic executive.) But the agency faces a unique set of problems.
The recession, for one, has forced the ATA to amp up its frugality. The agency relies on sales taxes, and when people have less money to buy things, the ATA's budget whimpers along with them.
Buses are also losing money to developers with tax-increment-financing agreements with Kansas City, Missouri. TIF deals allow developers to skim sales taxes in certain areas of the city. TIF areas keep expanding, which means less money for public transit.
The ATA might be able to withstand the recession and subsidy-hungry developers without a noticeable crimp in service. Hard times and an economic-development scheme are not the things putting a dent in the agency's budget, however.
The buses are also getting dinged by the city itself.
Kansas City, Missouri, collects a 0.5-percent sales tax for public transportation. The tax began in 1971, six years after the ATA was established as the single transportation agency for the metropolitan area.
A sales tax collected in the name of public transportation, you might think, would be delivered to a public transportation agency with a minimum of fuss. In fact, the city keeps a portion of the money — an increasingly large portion of the money.
The public transportation tax is expected to raise $29.6 million in the current fiscal year. The city plans to withhold $5.4 million, which is something more than a mere handling fee. William Wilson, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1287, which represents 672 ATA workers, calls the city's rake a "slush fund."
By any name, it keeps growing. The city's 18.3-percent cut follows a pattern of steady increases. In the 2003-04 fiscal year, the city kept only 4.6 percent of the sales tax.
So what's the city doing with the money? Plugging other holes in its budget.
The main recipient of the public transportation tax has been the city's Public Works Department. Public Works is staying partly true to the spirit of the tax by using the money for transportation-related functions, such as street and traffic operations.
But the number of Public Works endeavors to tap into the tax is growing.
In each of the last two budget cycles, the city has taken $2.6 million from the public-transportation tax to balance the books of the traffic-signals unit. "That's the one we landed on," Mark Thoma-Perry, a city budget officer, says.
Of course, the tax is not just for transportation but also for public transportation. So here's the city's logic on that point: Buses rely on traffic lights, so let's use mass-transportation revenue to keep the signals working!
The ATA, meanwhile, is hurting. In the summer of 2009, citing a $9 million budget shortfall, the agency instituted service cuts and fare hikes.
Riders noticed the difference. Buses on popular routes, including the 39th Street line that Farr uses to get to KU Med, arrive less frequently than they did in the past. Even the MAX, the "rapid" Main Street bus that's designed to appeal to more than just the carless, took a hit.
Other routes have disappeared entirely, creating havoc in the lives of people who rely on public transit. Hazeline Clay, a legally blind resident, moved out of her rented home on Kansas City's South Side after the Longview connector was discontinued. Her new place is within reach of the Blue Ridge line. "Cutting the bus routes really hurt a lot of people," she tells me.
Frustrated by the service cuts, transit advocates are beginning to push back at city officials for gobbling up the 0.5-percent sales tax.
Members of the Transit Action Network are meeting with members of the City Council over the next few weeks. One of the points they want to make is that Kansas City gets the public transit it pays for.
"Of course they don't have enough service," Janet Rogers, a member of the Transit Action Network, says of the ATA. "They don't have the money to provide it."
The ATA, it should be noted, receives an additional sales tax that did not exist seven years ago. In 2003, Kansas City voters approved a new 0.375-percent sales tax specifically for the ATA. Officials at the agency said the tax was necessary to maintain a tolerable level of service.
Rogers believes that the dedicated ATA tax has made it easier for city officials to justify taking larger shares of the less explicitly worded 0.5-percent sales tax. And a recession that has forced transit companies across the country to lay off workers and strand riders has also muted local outrage about service cuts and a 25-cent fare hike.
But the downturn is only partly to blame for ATA's deteriorating financial position. The city expects the 0.5-percent sales tax to bring in roughly the same amount of money that it did five years ago. Yet the ATA can expect to receive a check that's $5 million lighter than the one it cashed in 2005.
An accountant by training, Rogers has put together a spreadsheet indicating that the city has withheld $22 million from the ATA during the past eight years. "Imagine what we could have done for transit with another $22 million," she says.
ATA officials say they'll eat through their reserve funds in a couple of years. Huffer has been talking about more service cuts and calling for more concessions from the union, whose contract expires at the end of the year. "I expect tough negotiations," Wilson says.
The union driver who took Shawnoahia Farr to see her doctor was performing a vital service. By the time her bus pulled up to Troost, 12 other passengers were waiting for a ride.
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If the City Council had not stolen $750,000 from the funds of the city and misapplied them to pay to the wealthy ball teams stadium (Royals and Chiefs) there might be money for this stuff. They took money set aside for other community needs and gave it (wonder what they got in return) to the Wealthy Team Owners.
That's disgusting and if it ain't a crime it should be.
If the City Council had not stolen $750,000 from the funds of the city and misapplied them to pay to the wealthy ball teams stadium (Royals and Chiefs) there might be money for this stuff. They took money set aside for other community needs and gave it (wonder what they got in return) to the Wealthy Team Owners. That's disgusting and if it ain't a crime it should be.
KC has shitty bus service for the same reason there's no light rail - public transportation is perceived as something that primarily benefits minorities and poor people, and that sort of thing is a non-starter around here. As far as KC's leaders are concerned, tax dollars are much better spent on lining the pockets of the well-connected.
KC has shitty bus service for the same reason there's no light rail - public transportation is perceived as something that primarily benefits minorities and poor people, and that sort of thing is a non-starter around here. As far as KC's leaders are concerned, tax dollars are much better spent on lining the pockets of the well-connected.
"lackluster" and "diminutive" are nice compared to what I would call Mark Huffer. The KCATA needs to be shaken up from the top all the way down. Huffer and the rest of the management have no friggin' clue about how the bus system actually runs out on the street. I have had many problems with the bus service and with the "Share-A-Fare" paratransit program. Any time that I have called to complain all I get is attitude from the "customer service" representative and get shuffled around on the phone from one person to another. A few times, the person I would try to talk to would get so frustrated with me because I would not play in their game that I would be cut off and transferred to an UNACKNOWLEDGED voicemail system, where at one time the voice actually said "your call will not be acknowledged or returned". They have since taken that part off of the voice greeting, but the policy remains the same: they will not return your call or anything. I even had a major issue with one of the bus drivers and his racial discrimination to the point where when I called the ATA and told them what happened, the person on the other end tried to intimidate me by saying there is a lot of paperwork involved and "Are you sure you want to file a complaint? You will have to prove what happened to our satisfaction before we do anything." With that I told the operator where he could stick his paperwork and hung up the phone.
If Mark Huffer and the other idiots who run the KCATA were to actually be required to ride the bus to and from work and anywhere else they need to go, I can almost guarantee some changes to the bus service would be made. But, alas, Huffer and his buddies will never be seen on a Metro Bus, as it is beneath them; they are too good to ride a bus.
"lackluster" and "diminutive" are nice compared to what I would call Mark Huffer. The KCATA needs to be shaken up from the top all the way down. Huffer and the rest of the management have no friggin' clue about how the bus system actually runs out on the street. I have had many problems with the bus service and with the "Share-A-Fare" paratransit program. Any time that I have called to complain all I get is attitude from the "customer service" representative and get shuffled around on the phone from one person to another. A few times, the person I would try to talk to would get so frustrated with me because I would not play in their game that I would be cut off and transferred to an UNACKNOWLEDGED voicemail system, where at one time the voice actually said "your call will not be acknowledged or returned". They have since taken that part off of the voice greeting, but the policy remains the same: they will not return your call or anything. I even had a major issue with one of the bus drivers and his racial discrimination to the point where when I called the ATA and told them what happened, the person on the other end tried to intimidate me by saying there is a lot of paperwork involved and "Are you sure you want to file a complaint? You will have to prove what happened to our satisfaction before we do anything." With that I told the operator where he could stick his paperwork and hung up the phone. If Mark Huffer and the other idiots who run the KCATA were to actually be required to ride the bus to and from work and anywhere else they need to go, I can almost guarantee some changes to the bus service would be made. But, alas, Huffer and his buddies will never be seen on a Metro Bus, as it is beneath them; they are too good to ride a bus.
We have posted a follow-up article to David's article including information about our request to the City to cap the use of non-transit projects in the 1/2 cent sales tax transportation budget. See http://TransActionKC.com
This is great, instead of taxing these huge companies like Cordish and others who come to financials bleed the city we differ the taxes to the patrons of these TIF areas. In other words, we are giving Cordish a free pass on their taxes that many of their very own employeese probably rely on as their sole means of affordable transportation.
We are basically paying double for things that only benefit a very select few people financially and the folks who need these services the most are the ones getting hurt so that we can attract businesses. Welcome to the American version of the caste system.
We have posted a follow-up article to David's article including information about our request to the City to cap the use of non-transit projects in the 1/2 cent sales tax transportation budget. See http://TransActionKC.com
This is great, instead of taxing these huge companies like Cordish and others who come to financials bleed the city we differ the taxes to the patrons of these TIF areas. In other words, we are giving Cordish a free pass on their taxes that many of their very own employeese probably rely on as their sole means of affordable transportation. We are basically paying double for things that only benefit a very select few people financially and the folks who need these services the most are the ones getting hurt so that we can attract businesses. Welcome to the American version of the caste system.
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