Learn the Bus. Love the Bus.

Today’s guest column is by Dustin Durham, chair of the Knoxville Transportation Authority (KTA), the policy-making board for all for-hire intra-city passenger transportation services including bus transit, taxicabs and private for-hire services. The KTA also sets schedules, fares and routes for Knoxville Area Transit (KAT). 

You have to go. The location isn’t the focus. Nor the timing. Those matter, certainly, but in the grand scheme of things you simply have to go. You need to travel from point A to point B, and the distance you need to cover is not within a reasonable (or perhaps safe or comfortable) walk. So, what do you do?

The vast majority of us don’t even consider this as a question. To go means to grab our keys, get in our personal vehicles, and to drive. I could write about the history of public transit here and how it was robust and lovely and befitting of the richest nation in the history of ever. I could write about how various forces all led to the downfall of our public transit systems and left us with our reality now. 

Regardless of if I write about that in detail here, though, the reality is that we have inherited a nation which forces us to spend an average of $12,000 a year for the “freedom” of having a personal car as the only option to travel around our cities. We have endless shows on endless streaming services, but only one realistic way to go.

I have been honored to serve on the Knoxville Transportation Authority (KTA) since the start of 2023 and as of January, I now serve as the Chair. So you can say that I am rather passionate about making sure we have the best bus system we can, because to my core I believe we all deserve a Knoxville where we are not forced to spend our hard-earned money on increasingly-expensive gas or wait in traffic that will only get worse if we only invest in car infrastructure. Call me a radical, but I believe that if you are reading this, you deserve the true freedom that comes with being able to choose how you go, not having only the option of a car.

I think it’s time we demand better. In order to do that, though, we need to take stock of where we are as a community, right now, in regard to our public transit. We need to be aware of how our bus system works and what we still need to make our system better serve us, both now and in the future. We need to experience our public transit, together, so that we can dream big and make improvements over time, so that both our children and our future selves inherent a Knoxville with actual choices when it comes to traveling around our city. 

It is with that preface that I am happy to announce such an endeavor. Over the next few months, I will be hosting what I am calling “Ride the Routes with KTA.” For multiple weeks from now until the start of autumn, I will be riding a different KAT route in order to both experience it myself (like any bus rider, I only really know the routes I need to use to get around town), and to invite both you as a citizen, as well as our elected and appointed officials, to ride them with me. I hope that we can have conversations about what is needed to make our transit system better, and that for those curious about the system, they can learn how it works. 

I have already gotten to take two journeys so far, on Route 1 (Downtown Connector) and Route 16 (Middlebrook/Cedar Bluff), and I am hoping that with this article, I can get more riders for the remaining trips. Listed below are the next three rides that I have 100% been able to commit to, so I hope you can join. I may be adding two more before the end of May and will let Leslie know if that happens so she can share on her site calendar.

Those rides are as follows and unless otherwise noted will meet at 6:30 p.m. on that specified date. KAT will also be helping me to advertise these rides, so make sure to follow them on social media: Facebook, Instagram. 

I hope you can join me, and if you have any questions about these rides, or want to ever chat in general about public transit, I have made an official email for my time as KTA Chair. Give me a shout at: [email protected]. You can also follow me on Instagram @kta_dustin. Sorry, youths, I may be 35 but I am 80 in many ways and so I don’t do TikTok. 

Here’s to a Knoxville with true transportation freedom!

**An aside about Route 1 (Downtown Connector): It is currently in a trial period until June 1st where it is free again, and we hope to make it free again permanently, but the ridership numbers have to show that folks want to use it, so please use the downtown bus as much as you can these next two months.**