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…