Several students from Free State High School ride the T home from school Wednesday. Many high school students rely on the bus to get to and from school each day. From left in foreground are Liza Farr, Zoe Limesand, Carmel Sivron and Tess Frydman. According to a 2007 city ridership survey, 15 percent of students said they primarily use the bus to get to school.

George Gibbs, a disabled veteran, has a monthly pass to ride the T. Because of a severe head trauma Gibbs cannot drive. I

It’s a popular saying, but here on the No. 5 – where workers in ballcaps and blue jeans watch 23rd Street pass by to the harmony of a humming diesel – the phrase “time is money” doesn’t ring true.

When Debbie Sanchez’s car broke down a year ago, time didn’t pay to fix it. No one did, and Sanchez – the single mother of an 8- and 10-year-old – said good-bye to an Overland Park job.

She said hello to the T, the city’s fixed-route bus system.

She uses the bus every weekday to get from her home to her children’s daycare and then on to her new job at Vangent in the East Hills Business Park. She gets up two hours early each day to make this happen, but when she boarded the 4 p.m. bus – along with five other East Hills employees on Wednesday – she seemed genuinely happy to do so.

“In all honesty, when my car broke down, it probably was the best thing that could have happened,” Sanchez said. “This is so much less expensive.”

Sanchez estimates she’s spending $40 to $50 less per week on transportation compared with her past routine.

The story – near as I can gather from riding the T for two days last week – is the same on routes throughout the city. On a bus system where a recent survey found that 70 percent of riders said they had a household income of less than $25,000, there is no substitute for money.

On the T, money is money.

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First off, if you don’t like what follows, don’t blame me. Blame the phone book. Or maybe my wife a little bit.

On Thursday morning, I decided to undertake a public transit experiment. I wanted to tell readers about an experience of getting from point A to point B on the bus system.

I’m doing all of this on the backdrop of politics. Voters on Nov. 4 will either approve or reject two sales tax questions designed to pump funding into the city’s public transit system. The two questions would create a new quarter-cent sales tax designed to fund the bus system for the next 10 years.

If voters don’t approve the measures, it is unclear how the city would fund the bus system – including the paratransit system that serves the disabled and elderly – in 2009. There’s no money in the already-approved 2009 city budget to do so. It is assumed the public transit system would close.

So, the phone book. I used it in an effort to be fair and random in picking my starting and ending points for my experiment. I flopped open the white pages and stuck my finger on a name. The address next to it would be my starting point. I flopped open the yellow pages and pointed to a business. That would be my destination.

My starting point was the 1700 block of Miller Avenue in eastern Lawrence. My ending point was the AT&T Wireless store at 4000 W. Sixth Street, which is next to the Hy-Vee.

Then, life happened. Or more specifically, my wife happened. She informed me that this experiment did not relieve me of my daily duty of taking our nearly 3-year-old daughter to daycare, which is in the area of 27th and Alabama streets.

Thus, the experiment became this: 1700 Miller Ave. to 27th and Alabama streets to the Hy-Vee shopping center on Sixth Street. All on the bus.

Here’s how it went:

¢ First, I started by cheating. I drove to 19th and Haskell instead of walking from 1700 Miller to the nearest bus stop. That saved me a couple of blocks. Don’t worry, I’ll make up for it later. My daughter and I board the No. 1 bus at 7:52 a.m. on Thursday morning. There are three other riders on it.

¢ We get off at 23rd and Harper streets to catch the westbound No. 5. It is now 8:07 a.m. when we board that bus. My daughter and I are the only riders.

¢ By the time we get to 23rd and Louisiana streets, two other riders have joined us. We get off at the intersection. It is now 8:15 a.m. My plan is to take the southbound No. 7 to the 27th and Alabama area. But upon review of the schedule, the southbound No. 7 won’t arrive at the intersection until 8:55 a.m. I’m faced with a 40-minute wait in a bus shelter with a 3-year-old, or a 6-block walk with a 3-year-old. I begin to walk.

¢ I walked the whole way. My daughter walked half. We both arrive at the daycare about 8:50 a.m. I walk back to 27th Street and catch the southbound No. 7 at Naismith Valley Park. There are two other riders. I now need the northbound No. 7 to take me back to downtown. But I figure I’ll just ride the southbound, make the loop and it will turn into the northbound. I should arrive in downtown at 10 a.m.

¢ Just two minutes into my plan, at 27th and Iowa streets, I ask the bus driver if this is the quickest way to get back to downtown. We converse for 10 seconds at the most. In a husky East European accent, he tells me to get off here, catch the No. 5 eastbound, take it to Haskell Indian Nations University to catch the No. 2 back to downtown. He said the No. 5 will be along shortly. It wasn’t. Somewhere along the way, the bus driver and I had a breakdown in communication. I’m not blaming him, but I waited alone – standing along the side of Iowa Street – for 30 minutes before the bus arrived.

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Here’s a good time to take a break from my trip and dive back into the politics of the issue.

Even supporters of the T system admit that it is not perfect. But that doesn’t mean it is not worth saving, they say. David Smith, an organizer of the Campaign to Save the T, points out that the T reached the 400,000 riders per year mark three years faster than the Johnson County system did, which serves a population about five times larger.

“Anybody who has ever ridden the bus would tell you that they would like improvements,” Smith said. “More routes, more flexible routes would be helpful. But people who pay attention to these sorts of things professionally say that Lawrence’s transit system has been a wonderful success.”

But until July, the T’s ridership had declined in 20 of the last 22 months – when compared with the same month in the previous year – despite gasoline prices still pinching many pocketbooks.

Detractors of the T frequently point to buses that are far from full and say there must be a better way to spend city money. This year, the public transit system will cost $3.3 million to operate – with $1.7 million coming from city funds and $1.4 million coming from federal funds. Because of fuel costs, the system is expected to cost $4 million to operate in 2009.

“I’m not against public transit. I’m against public transit that wastes money,” said Bill Reynolds, who is a member of Americans for Prosperity, which is urging people to vote against the sales tax and instead have the city look at a taxi cab voucher program for those in need.

City leaders would like the public to think about a future system rather than the one we have today. All five city commissioners have said the current system needs to be changed, if the sales taxes are approved.

Kansas University leaders have presented the city with a letter of intent to merge the KU and city bus systems by mid-2009. City commissioners have expressed support for the idea, but have not yet signed the letter of intent.

Instead, they said they wanted to discuss the concept more with KU. Commissioners have said more details about what a merged system would like should come out before the election, but those details have not yet emerged.

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Back to the trip.

¢ A friend stops along the side of Iowa Street and tells me I’m going to get a ticket for loitering. It is the second friend of the day who saw me standing along the side of a busy street. The other asked me where my truck broke down. It is now 9:40 a.m. The No. 5 eastbound arrives. It has one other rider on it.

¢ I exit the No. 5 at Haskell Indian Nations University. I board the No. 2 to take me downtown at 10:04 a.m. I’m the only rider on the bus, although two more are picked up on the way to downtown.

¢ I arrive at the downtown transit hub at 10:20 a.m. and begin to wait the 23 minutes until the No. 6 counter-clockwise route will take me directly to the Hy-Vee Center. I strike up a conversation with Paul Punzo, who works at the Community Mercantile. He takes the bus to work. I ask him about the upcoming sales tax votes. He’s like everyone else I’ve talked to on the bus – hopes they’ll pass but not sure they will.

“If we drop the ball on this, it is going to make us look pretty (expletive) stupid,” Punzo said. “Everybody has a (expletive) car in this town. We’re liberal and do all this recycling, but we have all these cars.”

¢ The No. 6 leaves at 10:43 a.m. It starts with five other riders, but eventually ends up with nine riders before I get off at the Sixth and Monterey Way stop. I have the most interesting conversation of the day on this bus. A discombobulated man with a large duffel bag got on the bus near Sixth and Florida streets. He sits in front of me and soon asks me for a couple of dollars. I tell him I have none to spare. He mutters a two-word expletive describing me as a certain body part. But apparently, all was well a couple of minutes later. He asks me whether this bus runs every hour or every half hour. At this point, I honestly don’t know.

¢ I set foot on Hy-Vee ground at 10:56 a.m. I started at 7:52 a.m. If I had not had the misstep at 27th and Iowa streets, I would have arrived about a half-hour earlier.

I did time the trip in my truck. It took me 21 minutes to travel from 19th and Haskell streets to 27th and Alabama streets and then to 4000 W. Sixth St. I knew the bus wouldn’t be nearly as quick. The bus was undoubtedly cheaper – you can make the trip for $1 – than what I spent in gas for my truck.

But really, I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I was thinking about Debbie Sanchez. She does this every day. Two hours early she gets up to use the bus. I’m no Debbie Sanchez. I could honestly tell you that I would never do that every day. I could tell you that if I did, I would never be happy doing it.

But I won’t. That would be tempting fate.