Residents experience challenges, opportunities of reliance on CityLine Trolley

But for thousands more, CityLine, while still a prominent amenity, operates without context. An oft-seen but distant and rarely experienced occupant of city roads.

It was for the latter collection of residents that Howard County CASA on Thursday held an event titled A Day in the Life-Public Transportation, showing participants the nuances and challenges of relying on public transit for even the most mundane of tasks.

To show that process, the Day in the Life training gave participants the opportunity to ride trolleys and see firsthand what it’s like to regularly utilize CityLine services. It also displayed the daily services families are required to participate in on a day-to-day basis.

Attendees – including, in part, an Indiana University Kokomo official, Family Service Association employees and CASA volunteers – were separated into groups and given a hypothetical role of someone relying on the trolley system to complete a variety of tasks.

Roles included a college student needing to go to both class and a job and get to BioLife to donate plasma for money to buy groceries; a second supplied the role of a single mother trying to run around town with the roadblock of needing to pick up an unexpectedly sick child from school.

Along the line were necessary sacrifices, like the foregoing of an interview to catch the next bus.

“I thought it was important for people to understand how to get around using the trolley, because for so many people that is their only mode of transportation,” said Katina Silver, director of the CASA program in Howard County. “And I hear so many times, people say, ‘Well, they can just hop on the trolley and get to this appointment.’

“And it’s just not that simple, hopping on the trolley.”

The event, which included 30- or 40-minute waits in 40-something-degree weather and the construction of strategies to get from one location to the next, caused participants to call their experience “eye-opening” and describe their current situation as “taken for granted.”

Through September, the CityLine Trolley system had 292,126 passenger boardings. Those figures will put 2017 on or slightly above annual averages, according to Tammy Corn, executive director of the Kokomo Howard County Governmental Coordinating Council.

At a wrap-up session after the event, those who played various roles discussed what they see as challenges and potential upgrades of the CityLine Trolley system, a free resource that participants also spoke about in high regard and credited for providing otherwise unattainable opportunities to local residents.

In general, the event was expected to provide first-hand experiences from the viewpoint of local families so service providers can help address continuing needs and issues. It was also meant to provide an increased understanding to the responses that have previously been given about why services were not used.

Overall, the goal was to “provide additional knowledge to better educate and advocate when it comes to using the trolley system and how it will best benefit each family,” according to the CASA, or Court Appointed Special Advocates, preview of the event.

Some potential upgrades discussed by participants, and by Corn in a later interview, included the need for a real-time app for trolley schedules and routes, more sidewalks and connectivity, and later hours and weekend availability, along with the cumbersome distance from some bus stops to associated locations.

Participants also touched on the trolley’s positives, including its free of charge operation, the assistance provided by trolley drivers and passengers and the number of available stops. But more than anything, they appreciated the experience.

“You assume things, and then when you actually do it, it’s a completely different thing. And it gave me a whole new insight on what other people go through,” said Charlotte Jefferson, a CASA volunteer.

In response, Corn addressed the approach local officials are taking to provide public transit opportunities.

“I focus on the service more than anything, but [Kokomo Mayor Greg Goodnight], the administration, focuses weekly on, how can we expand?” said Corn. “There are weekly conversations on, where are there funds out there that we can expand the system? Can you look at this, look at that?”

Corn also highlighted the conversations she’s had with Goodnight regarding connectivity, including bike and pedestrian paths and additional attempts to connect people safely from one side of town to the other.

Included in that is making the areas around bus stops as “easy and safe” to navigate as possible, she said.

Corn noted that “we’re working on things right now. It’s a huge priority of the mayor’s. Huge priority. Even the bike lanes going down the streets that you see, those are all safety concerns and issue for connectivity and to link with the transit system.”

About possible expansion, Corn said that local officials, in a best case scenario, would like to expand to weekends and further into weekday evenings. But unpredictable federal funds make those goals difficult to achieve.

“The federal funds, we never know what is going to happen with the federal funds,” said Corn. “It’s all about funding.”

Notably, Corn added that it has been and will continue to be a priority to keep the CityLine Trolley system free of charge, in part because charging even a small amount would create new operational hurdles for local officials. But mostly, it's due to "the human element."

“When people have to get off and on with their kids, and they have to pay – let’s say we charge a dollar,” said Corn. “That’s themselves and two children, and they pay that $3. And the mom has to get off at the daycare and drop the kids off, get back on, they pay a dollar to get to their destination.

“And then they get back on, they pay their dollar, get off at the daycare, pick up their kids and they pay $3 to get back on. Then they have to get to the grocery store. By the time they’re done, that can turn out to be a $10, $11, $12 trip. It doesn’t become advantageous for them to ride.”

Corn also addressed the long waits experienced by some riders and whether they could be shortened, like various Day in the Life participants suggested.

“We are half-hour or hour systems, and the best way we could do that would be to shorten the line to 15-minute systems,” said Corn. “But again, shortening the lines to a 15-minute system would mean no expansion of weekends or later hours, so it’s an either-and-or. When you look at that, they all cost money.

“What you’d love to do would be everything: have a 15-minute system and a weekend day, and expand throughout larger areas of the city. But again, it all falls on the federal funding.”