KCATA Awarded For Regional Leadership, Communications Excellence

The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA) has collected four awards recognizing the agency for its efforts to improve regional transit, marketing public transportation and distinguished leadership.

For the first time, the Kansas Public Transportation Association (KPTA) tapped the KCATA as Transit Service of the Year for introducing the regional RideKC brand that will unify all four regional transit agencies together under one umbrella.

Launched late last year, RideKC will unify fragmented transit services in the Kansas City region with a new look and logo for public transportation throughout the area. The RideKC initiative also will include a single regional website for riders seeking information about transit, regardless of where they live or their destination.

RideKC’s ultimate goal is to provide a unified transit system that’s seamless and easy to use for connecting people to opportunity.

The regional initiative was already highlighted by new agreements turning over management of the transit systems in Johnson County, Kan. and Independence, Mo. to the KCATA. Work also is under way to streamline the fare structure and simplify access to paratransit services across the Kansas City area.

The KPTA also gave its highest honor – the William M. Murry Award – to Chuck Ferguson, the KCATA’s chief planning officer.

Ferguson has been involved with public transit in the Kansas City area for more than 25 years, first starting at the KCATA in 1989. A couple years later, Ferguson  moved over to Johnson County where he helped grow the system into an award-winning suburban service.

Returning to the KCATA this year as the agency’s top planner, Ferguson is intimately involved in the efforts to build a seamless regional transit network. He served one unfulfilled term as president of the Kansas Public Transportation Association and was later elected president twice.

The KCATA’s communication and marketing efforts received national recognition when they won first-place awards handed out this month out by the American Public Transportation Association in the annual 2015 AdWheel competition.

The KCATA won first place for promoting a new compressed natural gas fueling station and a series of brochures explaining the bus system for prospective riders.

More than 10,000 of the colorful, glossy brochures were distributed in less than six months after they were published in 2014.

The AdWheel prizes are awarded for five main categories and are evaluated by industry peers, based on the following parameters: target audience, situation/challenge for creating the entry, strategy/objective of the entry and the results/impact of the entry. KCATA competed against transit systems between 4 million and 20 million riders per year for the award.

The KCATA will be officially honored for its work at the American Public Transportation Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco in October.