By Mike Sherfy, KnoxPages.com reporter
MOUNT VERNON – Things are looking good at Knox Area Transit according to its quarterly report to the Knox County Board of Commissioners on Monday. “We are working off of a balanced budget,” said Matthew Kurtz, Director of Knox County Jobs and Family Services, “and I feel that things are going well.”
The average daily number of riders is currently down a little, but it has varied greatly throughout the quarter, rising from 490 per day during January to peak at 587 per day in February. An average of 543 riders used KAT’s services each weekday during March. Since the beginning of the year, KAT has transported riders on 35,380 trips—16,631 by shuttle and 18,739 via on-demand calls. Overall, the total number of trips has increased by 3,501 over the totals from 2014 while wait-times have been reduced.
While Knox Area Transit Director Martin McAvoy admitted that some of the rural shuttles were not as heavily-used as expected, he pointed out that the shuttles nonetheless reduced demand for their available on-demand vehicles and improved service throughout the entire system.
“The need is tremendous, and the more that we put vehicles on the road and put drivers in there to accommodate that need, the more we see how much need is there,” explained McAvoy. “The more we make the availability of transportation apparent, the more people ask about it. At First Friday, we had people coming up and asking whether it was only for the elderly or disabled and all that. No, it’s not.”
After presenting the commissioners with budget and usage data, Kurtz and McAvoy spent a good deal of the meeting discussing how service—both to rural areas of Knox County and to KAT riders heading to Columbus and elsewhere—would further improve when the new Ecolane automated scheduling software was fully implemented starting near the end of May and early June.
“That’s the beauty of the new automated system,” explained Kurtz. “As we roll it out this month, next month, and use the summer to get the bugs worked out of it, we are expecting it to give us a great deal more data like that. Who is going from the rural route and stepping on another one? What does the pattern of usage look like all through town? …That is why we have emphasized so much of our resources and our time to make sure that gets in and goes up and gets implemented. It’s a big lift at first but it’s going to give us a huge boost … on the bookkeeping end. It’s a big boost and it’s going to bring us more efficiency overall.”
“It will raise our efficiency in both deploying people and vehicles and in our fuel usage,” added McAvoy, “because it advises the drivers about their route and traffic…and it connects to GIS data that we have developed locally regarding our local businesses and places of interest…right down to front doors and back doors.”
Currently, administrators and shift leaders are learning more about the back-end of the Ecolane software to make them better able to troubleshoot problems in real-time as they arise. “At the end of this month and into June, we will be doing a live roll-out,” Kurtz explained. “We kind of wanted to wait until school is out because we have so many schoolkids riding, then there will be a little break there before we get into more summer stuff. We have a little bit of leeway there to do some training once school is out.”
Kurtz also informed the commissioners about his efforts to secure a parts procurement agreement with local vendors. NAPA, Advance Auto, and O’Reilly Auto Parts each submitted quotes but Director McAvoy recommended—and the Commissioners agreed—that further clarification was needed before proceeding. They hoped to have sufficient information to make an informed comparison within the next few weeks.
Kurtz noted that KAT has devoted less attention to advertising this quarter than anticipated due to prioritizing staff time on other aspects of the operation—especially the implementation of and training on the new dispatching software. Those interested in learning more about Knox Area Transit and its services can visit their website here.
