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A Narrative on Public Transportation in
Lawrence, Kansas
The Beginnings: Horse-Drawn Streetcars
1871
Just eighteen years after the founding of the city, the Lawrence Street Railway Company laid tracks down the center of muddy Massachusetts Street. Pulled by horses and later by teams of
mules, a streetcar named "Progress" rolled the length of the central business district and across the Kaw River bridge, connecting the hotels and businesses of downtown with the Kansas Pacific railroad depot north of the river.
1884
In the following decade, the street railway changed hands, and the new owner energetically extended the system of track through the growing city to serve riders bent on both business and pleasure.
Citizens could now ride all the way down Massachusetts to 19th Street, down residential Tennessee Street to 17th, as well as to the Santa Fe depot at 7th and New Jersey and along Locust Street north of the river all the way to the Bismarck Grove amusement park east of the city.
1902
The turn of the century brought competition for the Lawrence Street Railway Company. Lawrence gunsmith and bicycle mechanic C.L. Rutter brought a nine-passenger steam-powered vehicle (probably a Mobile Steamer) and began bus service between the downtown hotels and the railroad depots on both sides of the river. Offering faster and more comfortable transportation than the horse-drawn streetcars at the same fare, Lawrence's first self-propelled bus failed miserably. Automobiles of any kind were still objects of suspicion (there were only three in town), and Rutter's hissing and puffing monstrosity terrified the public, which gave it a wide berth and continued to ride the familiar streetcars, which didn't slide around in the mud and seemed less likely to explode. Frustrated, Lawrence's motor bus pioneer sold his bus.
1903
The next year, catastrophic floods swept away part of the Kansas River bridge and with it the rails on which the horse-drawn trams rolled back and forth between the central business district and the train depot across the river. The old bridge was quickly patched up well enough to carry pedestrian and automobile traffic, but it was not considered trustworthy enough for streetcars. With its main line severed and the Motor Age breathing down its neck, the Lawrence Street Railway closed after thirty-two years of service. Rutter had sold his bus too soon.
1905
Three years after Rutter's experiment in Kansas, the Fifth Avenue bus line in New York City began operation, winning credit as the first bus line in the United States.
The Electric Era
1907
Rutter finally decided to try his luck again, with a motor bus running along Massachusetts Street and out to Haskell Institute. Times had changed, motorized vehicles had become commonplace in Lawrence, and this time Rutter's scheme looked to be a success. But again, his timing was off.
1909 On a Sunday morning in September, many Lawrence citizens skipped church to goggle as five brand-new electric streetcars were unloaded from the train at the Santa Fe depot. (For months, the Lawrence Electric Light Company, recently acquired by a group of investors from Dayton, Ohio, had been stringing wires above the abandoned horse-car tracks and laying new track in parts of the city the old street railway had never visited.) Thirty-one feet long and seating fifty passengers, by that afternoon the open, San Francisco-style streetcars were buzzing (literally) up and down Massachusetts Street. Regular service began the following morning. With a fare of only five cents, the streetcars were immediately popular, and the next month eight "closed" streetcars, better suited to fall and winter weather, were added to the fleet. In short order, C.L. Rutter's motor bus service was again out of business.
For forty years, visitors to the University of Kansas had taken the street railway to 14th and Massachusetts, then climbed the hill. (In 1894 a civil engineer, concerned about the steep slope up which "seekers after knowledge must perspire" had designed an electric inclined railway for the 14th Street hill, but it was never built.) By the end of 1909, the Lawrence Light & Railway Company had extended tracks west from Massachusetts on 8th Street, with spurs running south on Indiana Street to the Pinckney area and north up the Mississippi Street hill to the University of Kansas, linking town and campus for the first time.
1917 The newly built Kaw Valley Interurban (KVI) electric railway provided hourly shuttle service between Lawrence and Kansas City. With the completion of a new bridge across the Kansas River strong enough for rail traffic, KVI passenger cars rolled right into downtown Lawrence, where KVI shared a depot (currently the Free State Brewery) with the Lawrence streetcar system. Passengers arriving from Kansas City could step directly from the KVI onto one of the Lawrence streetcars and ride directly to the University of Kansas, Haskell Institute, or nearly any other point in the city.
For by now, the KU spur ascending Mississippi Street had been extended into a loop around the south side of campus that returned down on Tennessee Street, through the Old West Lawrence residential neighborhood. The East Lawrence neighborhood was served by the track running south on New Jersey from 7th Street to 13th and east to Woodland Park. And after a thirteen-year hiatus, the KVI rails across the new bridge finally allowed the Lawrence Railway and Light Company to restore streetcar service to North Lawrence and the Union Pacific Station. A few years later, the route north of the river was extended west on Locust all the way to N. 8th Street. By 1930, 80% of Lawrence's 13,600 residents lived a 1/4 mile or less from a streetcar line.
1933 Succesful and popular as the electric trolleys were, with privately owned automobiles becoming more commonplace in the late 1920s, ridership declined. As the original streetcars wore out, the Kansas Electric Power Company (now KPL) began replacing them with gasoline powered buses, which it considered more flexible, and which Lawrence's growing population of motorists preferred because buses didn't stop in the middle of the street. Electric streetcars were replaced by busses on the Pinckney to North Lawrence route in 1927 and on the East Lawrence line in 1932. In 1933, the last streetcars were taken off the tracks of the KU line, and the electric era of public transportation in Lawrence was over. That same year, the KEP obtained from the city council a franchise to provide motor-bus service on five routes for ten years, at a fare of 10 cents (trolley fares had risen from 6 to 7 cents in 1920).
Rapid Transit Co.
1935 Within two years, however, Kansas Electric Power had changed its mind about being in the transportation business. The operation was sold to Gordon Angwin of Pittsburgh and Joseph Wilson of Lawrence, who called their new company the Rapid Transit Company. Buses ran on three routes essentially identical to the streetcar lines, with minor changes over the next several years that brought public transportation within a 1/4 mile of 85% of Lawrence's homes, with buses running every twenty or thirty minutes, depending on the route. In that same year, the Kaw Valley Interurban Railway, faced with a growing financial crisis, discontinued passenger service.
1945 During the war, Rapid Transit had bused Lawrence workers to the Sunflower Ordinance Works near DeSoto. After the war, with an upsurge in the student population and the city booming to the west, the company started running buses from downtown Lawrence to the West Hills residential area. The buses ran every twenty minutes and stopped at the university on the way. Altogether, there were now six buses leaving downtown for the KU campus every hour.
1957 The postwar economic boom also meant that more and more families could afford to drive their children to school and themselves to work or to the store. Lawrence's automobile dealers were thriving, but Rapid Transit Company was not. Revenues declined from $109,000 in 1951 to $73,000 in 1956. In February, the company announced that the familiar buses would vanish from the streets in the spring, leaving the city without public transportation for the first time in nearly a century.
As a flurry of newspaper editorials and letters to the editor testified, this news raised considerable alarm in the city. Schoolchildren relied on the buses, as did employees and students of both Haskell Institute and the University of Kansas (indeed, according to Rapid Transit's records, the two KU lines continued to turn a profit). Downtown merchants worried that fewer shoppers would be able to visit the central business district, and city leaders worried that more shoppers would drive themselves downtown, adding to parking and traffic problems. Mayor John Weatherwax appointed an advisory committee, consisting of representatives from the city commission, the University of Kansas, Haskell Institute, the Traffic Commission, and the interested public, chaired by Chamber of Commerce secretary E.R. (later "Bus") Zook.
Zook proposed that private contributions be used to guarantee against losses if Rapid Transit would continue service for a year. During that time, a campaign to rally public support and increase ridership might succeed in making business viable again. Meanwhile, the committee was both looking for entrepreneurs interested in running a bus company and mulling the ramifications of a municipally owned system. The final day of bus service approached, but private contributions had not gushed in, no buyer had stepped forward, and the city commission remained deeply skeptical about committing the city to running its system. In a bitter statement, E.R. Zook said the public could have saved the buses by riding them, but had chosen not to. The May 27 headline in the Journal-World read, "Hope About Gone." On June 8, Rapid Transit Company went out of existence.
Lawrence Bus Company
1957 The next month, the city announced a bond election, which carried a $150,000 proposal for establishing a city-owned bus system. Just four days before the September referendum, the Wichita Bus Company agreed to run buses in Lawrence, on the condition that $7,000 in mortgage bonds could be sold before the election. The bonds were sold over the weekend, and the Chamber of Commerce immediately urged the public to vote down the bond proposal in the next day's election, which it did.
The newly formed Lawrence Bus Company bought six buses from Rapid Transit with the bond revenue and hired a number of the older company's drivers. Within a week, buses were rolling again on three routes.
1958 By the next year, three more routes had been added, and about 75% of Lawrence's residents once again lived within 1/4 mile of public transportation. Fare was 15 cents for adults (raised to 20 cents the following year) and 10 cents for children and high school students.
1964 Before long, the Lawrence Bus Company had expanded bus service beyond the routes that had been traditional since 1910. The company provided morning and afternoon school-bus service city-wide and tailored its services to the needs of college students. Buses ran between Jayhawk Boulevard and the major dormitories eight times an hour, and other routes connected the Naismith and Ellsworth dormitory complexes with downtown Lawrence as well as the main campus. Night buses ran on campus Monday through Thursday evenings while classes were in session.
1966 The first signs of trouble appeared when the Lawrence Bus Company discontinued service on the unprofitable North Lawrence and East Lawrence routes.
1968 For the first time, the bus company failed to break even. Annual losses increased over the next three years.
1971 In January, Duane Ogle, president of the Lawrence Bus Company, notified the city commission that after fourteen years, his company's future was uncertain. The business depended on KU students for 80% of its revenue, and fewer students were riding the buses. Ogle attributed the change to political turbulance on campus and dwindling dormitory occupancy. He announced an increase in fares to 30 cents for city routes and 20 cents for campus routes, but made it clear that unless ridership increased, a subsidy from either the city or the university would be required if bus service were to continue.
Meanwhile, however, the North Lawrence Improvement Association (NLIA), supported by the League of Women Voters, had been advocating city support for renewed bus service to North and East Lawrence. In May the city commission voted to make $8,000 available to compensate Lawrence Bus Company for that year's losses, provided that the company undertook a three-month experimental revival of the North and East Lawrence route. While a study sponsored by NLIA had predicted a daily ridership of 302 persons, after two months the experimental route was carrying only twenty people a day. (Urban planner Martha Munczek pointed out that low ridership was probably due to the schedule, which offered no return to North Lawrence from downtown between 9:50 a.m. and 3:20 p.m.). In November, at the end of the three-month trial period, the North and East Lawrence route was abandoned.
In October, Duane Ogle announced that fall had not brought the hoped-for upsurge in student-ridership; indeed, revenues were about half of what they had been the previous year. Barring a miracle, bus service would cease in December. Both Buford Watson, city manager, and Lawrence Chalmers, chancellor of the university, expressed regret, but asserted that neither the city or the university administration had the financial resources available to subsidize continued bus service.
KU on Wheels
1971 On December 6, the KU Student Senate, alarmed at the looming prospect of a winter on Mt. Oread without buses, passed a bill allocating $15,184 to guarantee bus service for students through March. The next week the Senate signed a contract with the Lawrence Bus Company to keep buses moving, both on the campus and between the university and the dormitories and student apartment complexes. By the terms of the contract, the Senate stipulated the routes and hours of service and agreed to provide funds as needed to guarantee the bus revenues of $8.00 per bus hour. The fare was to be lowered from 20 to 10 cents.
The terms of the Student Senate bill specifically forbade Lawrence Bus Company buses from stopping in downtown Lawrence. David Miller, student body president, announced that if Lawrence merchants wanted students bused downtown to shop, they would have to put up the money themselves.
1972 By February, however, Miller had decided to allow downtown service after all, thanks in part to a concession on the part of the bus company, which agreed to provide five hours of daily service to downtown without charge to the Student Senate.  The new student transportation system, called KU on Wheels, was satisfactory to both the Lawrence Bus Company and the Student Senate, and in March a new contract was signed. In August, three additional student-orientated routes were added.
Anyone could ride the KU on Wheels buses (though few non-students realized this), but bus service was largely restricted to periods when classes were in session. Buses still visited Massachusetts Street, but only for the two blocks between Seventh and Ninth Streets. With all bus routes passing through the campus and connecting it to centers of student residence, the axis of public transportation in Lawrence had shifted away from the city's downtown to the University of Kansas campus.
1973 The Student Senate began selling semester bus passes. An eighteen-year-old student named Steven McMurry became director of KU on Wheels. Under the nominal supervision of the Student Senate and a student and faculty "transportation board" that gradually ceased to meet, McMurry assumed autonomous control of the campus bus service.
The Douglas County Senior Services, Inc inaugurated "Bus 62," offering door-to-door paratransit services for the elderly.
1977 The Student Senate's abrupt entry into the mass-transit business left it facing looming problems for which it was little prepared. With the help of the city of Lawrence, the university administration, and the school district, funding was obtained for a Transit Development Program (TDP) study.
The 1977 TDP study concluded that neither the city nor the university appeared willing to take the necessary steps to create an integrated, centralized public transportation system. Under the circumstances, "postponement of action in this case is in the community's best interests." The consultants instead recommended optimizing the services currently available in the community and coordinating them under a Transportation Advisory Board. The TDP study also recommended "immediate steps to formalize the KU on Wheels student administrative structure to be more commensurate with the scale of responsibility."
1982 Still a student and still in charge of the university transportation system, Steven McMurry handled the revenues from semester bus-pass sales. In September, a student's check, made out to KU on Wheels, bounced when deposited in Steven McMurry's personal account. Investigation eventually revealed that McMurry had embezzled $257,000, beginning in 1973. He was convicted on five felony accounts and sentenced to 8 to 20 years in prison. After 16 months in prison, McMurry was paroled in 1984, agreeing to pay back the embezzled funds. (As of 1996, he has paid back less than $3,000).
Federal Funding
1985 In a meeting with officials of the federal Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA), city commissioners were startled to learn that the city was eligible for up to $1.6 million in UMTA funding for public transportation. (As a result of the 1980 census, the city was now a federally designated "urbanized" area, and the Lawrence-Douglas County Metropolitan Planning Office was designated as the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) in 1982, a prerequisite for the UMTA funding.)
Federal money was allocated annually, but funds not applied for reverted to the treasury each year. Scrambling to apply before the yearly deadline, the Planning Office put together a proposal for the purchase of four new buses for the Lawrence Bus Company fleet. The attempt to graft the beginnings of a Lawrence bus system onto Ku on Wheels quickly foundered. Disputes arose between the city and the university over control of the buses, which would be subject to UMTA stipulations on routes and schedules. The interests of the city and of the university were at odds and the proposal was abandoned.
1991 The Public Transportation Blueprint Committee, a citizen advocacy group, devised a plan for a bus system tailored to the needs of the city's low-income and elderly residents. The Blueprint Committee proposed a three-month trial run, supported by private contributions and city and federal funds, with subsequent funding to be provided jointly by the city and the Federal Transportation Authority (formally UMTA). Federal officials explained that FTA did not fund new fixed-route demonstration systems without a justified need, and that a formal feasibility study was a prerequisite for applying for FTA grants.
1992 Consultants were hired, and the resulting study turned up another stumbling block: the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) stipulated that no federal money for a fixed-route bus system would be forthcoming until the city had met ADA provisions regarding paratransit services. In their feasibility study, the consultants recommended a taxi-voucher system, both to help meet the ADA requirements and to provide more information about local transportation needs. Both the city commission and public transit advocates were unsatisfied with the consultant's recommendation.
1993 The proposed taxi-voucher system called for a one-mill property-tax levy. City Commissioner John Nailbandian asked Chris Ogle, president of the Lawrence Bus Company, to prepare a proposal for a "starter" bus system that could be funded for the same amount. However, the federal requirements for complementary paratransit service remained an obstacle. Scrapping the taxi-voucher idea, the city commission voted to commit $100,000 of municipal funds starting in 1994 for a coordinated paratransit services.
The city signed a contract with the Douglas County Community Transportation Coordinating Council (DCCTCC) to coordinate the paratransit services of the Douglas County Senior Services, Independence, Inc., and Cottonwood Inc. along with Douglas County Area Transit (DCAT), a city-funded paratransit service.
1996 After operating in the red for two years, KU's Student Senate in February approved a loan of $140,000 to the bus services's reserve account and a $2 increase in the student transportation fee. Student body president Kim Cocks, warned the Student Senate that if it rejected the loan provision, KU on Wheels wouldn't be able to operate all its thirty buses along 19 city and campus routes through the rest of the year. The fee, paid by all KU Lawrence campus students as a part of tuition costs, increase from $12 per semester to $14 per semester. Ridership on the system was about 11,000 per day, down from a peak of nearly 15,000 riders per day in 1989. The decrease in ridership is partly blamed on more students living farther away from campus and the cost of a bus pass, which was $120 a year. On-campus student parking passes range from $35 to $53 per year.
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