Thursdav. March 27. 1980
University Daily Kansan
5
Residents voice mixed reactions to jitney service
BY LYNN ANDERSON Staff Reporter
A newly licensed jitney service for Lawrence is bringing applause from some residents and signs of despair from others. The bus service in transportation is saddened on every body's lips.
The jitney service, approved at Tuesday's city commission meeting, will provide on-call van service for the handcapped and elderly at $1.50 a ride.
The designer of the jitney, Ward Thompson, has stressed that the service would be less expensive than cab fare, would be
available on 30 minutes notice, and would operate all night.
LAWRENCE'S CITY MANAGER, Buford Watson, said yesterday that because it would not be economical for the city to have a "fixed-rate" bus service, the hivejay
"The city can't afford buses under our present tax structure." Watson said. "Someone always pays—the riders or the taxpayers."
Watson said federal grants were available for public transportation equipment but not for operation, and that a full-scale public transit system would have to be subsidized.
Watson also pointed to recent reports that federal regulations were making public buses inefficient in energy and economy. The report noted that the climate control and wheelchair lifts had made buses heavy and expensive, and that contractors no longer wanted to hid on them.
THE STUDY RECOMMENDED that the city concentrate on special groups such as the aged and handicapped, he said.
Watson said the city investigated public transit a year and a half ago with a study of Lawrence's transportation needs.
Latin Week program focusus on women
Tradition, coupled with the rapid urbanization of Latin America, has kept lower class Latin American women oppressed. A study right at a Laux week program in Wescue Hall.
The speakers were Elizabeth Kurnesoff, visiting assistant professor of history, and Robert Oppenheimer, assistant professor of physics. The program, called "The Double Day," also made up the program, sponsored by the Latin American Studies Association and the office of unity affairs.
"The Double Day" referred to two jobs a working woman in Latin America must hold
down the jobs of a worker and a home-
owner. She is a mother (Jen) explored the desires of poor ladh women to be themselves and to find jobs of their own instead of being more appendages.
Kuzes of the migration of poor rural people to the cities forced lower class women into jobs such as seamstresses, prostitutes and domestic workers.
Increased technology in factories has also reduced the number of jobs available to women, she said.
"In fact, a very large percentage of the women in the service sector are domestic workers," she said.
And, she said, domestic work is a deadend job, with marriage as the only escape.
Oppenheimer said that the trend toward urban dwellings was causing massive unemployment for lower class males as well as females.
He said the problem would be difficult to resolve.
"The cities are growing, so it's not going to get better. It's going to get worse," he said.
"You'd have to institute complete and total reversals of society," he said. "I don't know that there is any single way that can be done."
Attention!
Corr. Secretary
Rec. Secretary
President
Schumm said that although he supported a public transportation plan-to be implemented in an emergency or a gasoline station, it is not here" for public transit in Lawrence.
Commissioner Bob Schumm agreed that "the jitney has to be a step in the right direction."
Vice-President
The Black Student Union is now taking nominations for the offices of:
He said the city had used that approach, supporting the bus services of the Council on the Aging and the Cottenwood facility for the handicapped.
"Three dollars for a round trip don't sound like much," Kathy Wallace, a member of the board of directors of the company, said. "But if you are on a fixed income, it is."
"It's easy to say the city ought to do it, but maybe the city does I want to raise taxes to do it," Schumann said.
"We've tried to do what we can and to let private enterprise handle what it," Watson said.
Many low- to moderate-income residents, however, are saying that the jitney plan has severe limitations.
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THE MAIN DRAWBACK, they say, is its cost.
Parliamentarian
Those interested can sign up at the BSU office, B113 Kansas Union. The deadline is Thursday March 27, 1980.
BSU office: 864-3984
Treasurer
Wallace said it would cost her as much to take her daughter on the jitney as it would to hire a baby-sitter for her.
Wallace said far East Lawrence residents bused and walked to the city, route and bus planed to approach the city, too. If both efforts failed, she said, residents were considering filing a suit to force the city to increase bus service.
But he said, "There still needs to be a lower-priced service available to citizens in the near future."
"THE JITNEY SEEMS to be the city's alternative to a bus service," Wallace said. "But I don't think it's going to meet the needs."
Paul Winn, administrative assistant to the Human Relations Commission, said he could not say whether the jitney would meet all residents' needs.
The cost of the jitney service concerns residents of Edgewood, Lawrence's public housing development, according to Debrah
She said she had heard that the jitney operator also planned to charge extra for bags of groceries that passengers carried on the van.
"I think some city officials are open to the idea, but nobody's pushing it," Treaster said. "It's a real shame."
"We just want alternatives to walking; and the end of our lack of opportunities to find jobs," she said.
Treaister said the possibility of a downtown mail made effective public transit important, to bring residents of out-lying areas in to the city.
A MEMBER of the board of the East Lawrence Improvement Association, Steve Treater, he recognized the need of far East Lawrence residents for transportation.
Butcher of the Edgewood Tenants Association.
"I'm afraid that if the service is successful, they'll raise their rates," Butcher said.
She said that 28 percent of Edgewood's residents were unemployed and that the lack of public transportation hindered their efforts to find work.
"I don't care if it's trolleys or buses, just so it's mass transit," Treaster said. "It's time has come."
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