Blog: KAT Blog

Our last Trolleys on Tap - Old City Java

Another great discussion last Wednesday at Old City Java. If I could sum up our discussions, I would say the major point was as follows:

The Old City needs trolley service. Images of The Old City are used throughout marketing publications for downtown Knoxville – yet it is not connected via the downtown trolley system. Summit Hill Avenue is a decent hill and a wide street – this combination tends to visually isolate The Old City from the rest of downtown, which makes the trolley connection even more important.

The major connections that a trolley system needs to make are between The Old City, Market Square and UT. However, expansion of the system to places like the Warehouse District (Jackson Avenue out to Willow and beyond), Emory Place and Happy Holler came up as well. Many mentioned they would be willing to pay fares to reach these areas. Naturally, KAT staff mentioned the regular current bus service that extends from these areas into downtown.
map image of Old City routing

Hours of service and frequency
We heard requests for service until 10:00 p.m., or alternately, a weekend late night trolley until 2:00 a.m. with a trolley that runs until 8:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Regarding frequency, many felt that knowing when the bus would be somewhere (a set time) was better than putting resources into more frequent service. In addition, adding maps and timetables to the actual stops themselves would improve the experience – in fact, a single, well-defined stop in the Old City with amenities like information and shelter would be ideal.

Parking
According to some of our participants, one misconception with The Old City is the lack of parking. There is generally a wealth of parking available under Hall of Fame/James White Parkway. Several downtown employees park there for free during the day and walk up Summit Hill to work. This free, under a bridge type of parking was the partial intent of the current Gay Street routing. But it seems that the parking under I-40 around Gay Street and Magnolia never really caught on with downtown employees. The Old City presents an opportunity to provide that free parking to downtown employees, possibly more successfully than the current Gay Street route. This would be an additional benefit for service closer to The Old City.

Visitors
The trolleys are seen as a great way to bring visitors down to The Old City. Trolleys are great ways for getting to an ‘unknown’ area. People coming downtown tend to go to Market Square OR The Old City, but not both. There is a sort of ‘mental divide’ separating them, which is also known as Summit Hill Drive.

The challenge of connecting people to the waterfront came up. Turns out that the elevator on Hill Avenue is locked at some point in the evening – we need to check on when that is. There are also new connections to the greenway along Hill Avenue which we need to emphasize. There was discussion of the south waterfront as well, and ways to provide additional pedestrian connections to the waterfront.
South Knoxville and Hill Ave.

Questions that came up, and the associated answers
What is the trolley service area boundary? The trolley service area is the Central Business Improvement District (CBID) boundary, Ft. Sanders and The University of Tennessee, plus city-owned parking areas.

When are people riding the trolleys? Are they riding at night? This information is currently being collected along with other data and will be posted in a blog for review.

How often are the railroad tracks through The Old City used? We are working to get hard data on that, but comments from The Old City business owners indicate that trains can block Central for 30-minutes at a time.

Other comments:
The regular KAT bus system is good – the increased frequency has been great and one participant was impressed with the system and the predictability of the buses.

Consider adding a fare to the late night trolley to make the later service more cost effective.

Some UT classes are moving to The UT Conference Center – there could be more demand between UT’s main campus and the conference center in the near future.

The trolleys should go back to the service as it was provided prior to 2011. Copy of previous trolley routing

REMINDER: While our Trolleys on Tap Listening Sessions have concluded, there is still time to take our online survey, which will remain open through Friday, October 16th. Please take our survey if you haven’t already.

Next week’s blog: something for the data nerds out there – we’ll be taking a look at what our numbers tell us: where are people riding and when. In early November, we will post the results of our online survey. Then we’ll pull all of this information together and we’ll come back with some ideas! Stay tuned.

Posted by bbrill On 13 October, 2015 at 3:49 PM 1 Comment

Comments

C. L. Clevenger (Guest) said On 15 October, 2015 at 5:09 PM

That one rider was "impressed with...the predictability of the busses" is pretty faint praise & even lamer to mention. Mayhap that person just rode the bus once. I've been riding for years; would that I could say the same.