Lawrence Route and Schedule Design

The City of Lawrence, home to two dynamic transit systems, hired Olsson to prepare a route and schedule design to coordinate its transportation plan. The University of Kansas' "KU On Wheels" has transported students to class from the residential areas surrounding the campus since the 1970s. The City Transit system, "The T," has provided residents with citywide transportation options since 2001.

Olsson has identified ways for these two systems, with very different missions, to coordinate services to increase efficiencies and bring a higher level of service to both students and city residents. These ongoing coordination and implementation plans involve actively engaging diverse stakeholders, studying efficiencies of individual routes within the system, highlighting overlapping services, and creating exciting new concepts for transit solutions that serve both student and full-time residential needs.

The first step in the coordination process is a new, fully coordinated route, proposed by Olsson that links the downtown to a retail district, going through the KU campus and dense residential areas, merging three routes into one.

The second task involves developing a longer-term system analysis and more major coordination efforts.