Part Top Gun, part Super Bowl: The ultimate busman’s holiday in KC

Nicholas Miller was 3 when he found his calling.

The year was 1971, and Pinkie Miller had driven with her kids — Nicholas and sisters Kim, 9, and Rhonda, 7 — to see a family friend. Afterward, she stopped at a neighborhood convenience store, near 43rd Street and Cleveland. It was about 10 p.m. when she left her kids in the car and ran inside to grab some milk.

Nicholas Miller sensed his chance.

The boy escaped from his child safety seat, got his hands on the steering column’s gear shift and put the green Chevrolet in neutral. “That was when you didn’t have to put your foot on the brake to put the car in gear,” Miller, now 46, says.

The Chevy lurched forward. Kim, startled from sleep, felt the car start to move down an incline and clambered over the front seat to take charge. Her brother, she says, was moving the steering wheel back and forth.

“I didn’t know how to make the car stop,” says Kim L. Hunt, now a Chicago resident. “I thought there was magic in the gears, but I could kind of hear my mother in the background asking for someone to help.”

The car rolled several yards and smashed into a tree. “We weren’t going real fast,” Hunt says, “but because I got in the front seat, I hit my head on the steering wheel.”

Rhonda busted her lip in the mishap, but Nicholas emerged unscathed — at least physically.

“When we got home, he ran into his hiding place,” Hunt recalls. “He went into the kitchen cabinet so he could be invisible and deal with our wrath. We never let him forget that, either.”

“The tree is still there,” Miller says. “My mother used to tell me, ‘There’s your mark.’ ”

Hunt can still see the scar caused by her brother’s zeal for speed, but she says she now considers Nicholas an impeccable driver. If she hadn’t moved away from Kansas City two decades ago, she wouldn’t mind riding along with him now.

Plenty of other people do just that every day. Miller has spent the past 14 years as a bus operator for the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority. The 1985 Paseo High School graduate has emerged over that time as one of the KCATA’s finest drivers — a fact he was ready to prove publicly this month.

“I love competition, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to see how good of a driver I actually was,” says Miller, a single father of three.

He’s talking about the 2014 International Bus Roadeo. Sponsored by the American Public Transportation Association as part of its Bus & Paratransit Conference, the roadeo (think “road”) pits bus operators against one another (as well as face-offs between maintenance teams) in a series of skill-testing competitions. It’s Top Gun for bus jocks.

Miller, along with other local participants, had been tapped to represent the KCATA at the event, which dates back to the late 1970s and was this year coming to Kemper Arena May 2-6. Though not the sort of party that gets mainstream attention, the roadeo draws a dedicated convention crowd. The Kansas City Convention & Visitors Association predicted that the 2014 International Bus Roadeo, with some events in the American Royal Arena and the Kansas City Convention Center, would be good for $2.1 million of local economic impact (based on spending by the organization and its attendees).

Roadeo drivers steer metro buses through a maze of orange traffic pylons, barrels and tennis balls and perform a series of common turns and maneuvers in a timed sequence lasting 7 minutes or less. Completing the scoring is a compulsory pretrip vehicle inspection, during which drivers are timed and graded by identifying eight equipment-related defects and one security hazard (does that package look suspicious?) planted on or in a bus.

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There also is a customer-service competition, testing an operator’s ability to handle the human element of sitting in the driver’s seat and dealing with various job hazards — fare disputes, tardiness complaints, public drunkenness, the occasional physical altercation.

“It’s a tough job, day in and day out,” says Mark Catenacci, chairman of the International Bus Roadeo and senior project manager for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority in Philadelphia. “They won their local competitions to score a ticket here, but attendance, chargeable accidents and other incidents are weighed as part of their evaluation process of getting to the roadeo. They get to compete with the best of the best, and we’ll see who comes out on top.”

On the mechanics’ side, teams of three maintenance employees are asked to diagnose and repair a timed series of seven modules, including brake systems, vapor-door systems, air-conditioning systems and engines. Scores from the bus and mechanic roadeos are combined to determine a grand-champion agency. Last year, that was the Southern Pennsylvania contingent.

Drivers in the 2014 event, representing bus agencies from metropolitan areas across the United States and three Canadian provinces, are quick to liken the International Bus Roadeo to the NFL’s Super Bowl — only without the worldwide TV audience, the endorsements, the commercials or the fat paychecks.

But there are Super Bowl–sized rings, and Daniel R. Schmidt has a fistful of them. Schmidt is a 23-time International Bus Roadeo participant and five-time champion. (Last year, in Indianapolis, he was a runner-up.) But if this is Schmidt’s Super Bowl, he doesn’t talk about it like a hungry quarterback.

“The roadeo helps me do my job so much better,” he says. “I like meeting other drivers to see what they do, and it helps me be more aware of how I’m driving. It makes me safety conscious, because if you have an accident, you can’t compete.”

To beat a veteran driver like Schmidt, a first-time roadeo contestant like Miller needs an edge. Miller figured he had a couple.

Earlier this year, Miller won the KCATA’s local competition for operators of 40-foot buses — and he did it on the same Kemper Arena parking lot where the international final was scheduled for Sunday, May 4.

“I think that our buses, something that we are used to handling, will give us a little advantage,” Miller tells me in the runup to the contest, referring to the 2007 40-foot, low-floor bus manufactured by Gilling and weighing 26,630 pounds.

But the course designs for the international finals would turn out to be much more difficult than the setup that Miller and teammate Geran McConnell (competing in the 35-footer category) had seen at their local qualifier. Assembled by course engineer Napoleon Jones — the bus roadeo’s version of golf great and course designer Jack Nicklaus — the obstacle-laden layouts for the 7-minute runs were built to be more expansive and challenging than in years past.

During the operators’ orientation session at the downtown Marriott Hotel, Jones offers blunt advice. “If you are over 8 or 9 minutes, you can’t win the roadeo,” he says. “If you’re under 4 minutes, you’re dangerous. We had a guy a few years ago do 4 minutes and 36 seconds. We had to pull him off the course.”

Drivers would have just one practice round the day before the Sunday finals. Among the challenges on the pavement: a series of turns, reverses and passenger stops (marked “10th and Main” and “18th and Vine” in homage to the host city), and a diminished-clearance obstacle calling for the vehicle to ramp up to at least 20 miles an hour (checked by radar) and pass through a V-shaped series of barrels barely wider than the bus’s 8.5-foot width.

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A maximum of 700 points are attainable during the driving competition, with deductions for attempting obstacles in the wrong order, touching cones, hitting curbs and running over anything not deemed part of the competition (like, say, one of the dozens of judges on the course taking measurements). It’s a gauntlet of rules, and a laser-focused Miller wants to be prepared. During a prepractice briefing, he raises his hand to ask a whether operators must “bump the horn” a second time when reversing.

“Just wanted to make sure,” Miller says.

Gabe Beliz, the defending roadeo champion in the 35-foot class, was once in Miller’s shoes. Five years ago, he was a neophyte roadeo operator with more questions than answers. Now, Beliz puffs out his meaty chest among conference attendees, confident that his countless flawless hours on the road will once again translate to victory. He’s a favorite to repeat.

“My first roadeo, I had no idea what to expect,” Beliz says. “I went with a co-worker to Wenatchee, Washington, and when I got there, it was just a parking lot with buses and cones. There were no horses, no cows, no clowns or nothing. I thought it would be boring, but it’s exciting when you know what you’re looking for.”

Beliz is a protégé of five-time winner Schmidt, with Washington state’s Ben Franklin Transit. “He’s taught me how to do the obstacles, how to be patient and what to look for,” Beliz says. “In the bus, I am constantly applying the principles he’s taught me.”

After Miller finishes his roadeo practice run, I ask him to direct me to a bus line that might offer a reasonably interesting cross-section of riders and scenery. I want to see whether things have changed since I left Kansas City.

Miller’s sister Kim Hunt has already given me reason not to expect a big improvement. “The history of the automobile in Kansas City has such a huge impact,” she says. Hunt has a master’s degree in urban planning and policy with a transportation focus from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and she worked for the Chicago Transit Authority, trying to solve that city’s transit woes. And before all of that, she was familiar with KC’s bus problems.

“It takes a certain community culture and leadership to be willing to pay for public transportation,” she says. “Cities look at public transportation as something for low-income people, but in some cities, like Chicago and New York, it’s for everyone.”

That low-income-only attitude was prevalent when I lived in KC (including a year and a half writing for this publication when it was called Pitch Weekly, at the start of the new century). Back then, riding the bus felt akin to wearing a “kick me” sign around Westport. I owned not one but two cars, partly in an effort to avoid ever getting on a bus. Growing up in Chicago, I’d ridden public transportation everywhere and didn’t even own a car the year I covered the Chicago White Sox as a beat writer.

In this town, as Hunt has reminded me, issues of race and money are intimately tied to generations-deep perceptions about — and failures of — public transportation. From the dismantlement of the old streetcar system to the light-rail debate of recent years, Kansas City just isn’t a place where the nondriver is much considered. People without access to a car are often simply out of luck; buses here don’t run after hours, and the routes to areas such as the East Side and Kansas City International Airport remain poor or nonexistent.

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A 2011 Brookings Institution study puts Kansas City near the bottom of major metropolitan areas enabling access to jobs via mass transit.

That report, titled “Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs in Metropolitan America,” ranks Kansas City 90th out of 100 in combined access of coverage and job access via public transportation. The share of working-age residents near a transit stop was just 47 percent, compared to a metro average of 69 percent for the top 100 U.S. markets. The share of all jobs reachable via mass transit within 90 minutes in Kansas City was 18 percent, compared to an average of 30 percent for the rest of the 100 metros. And the median wait for a transit vehicle in Kansas City during rush-hour traffic was 14.2 minutes — more than 4 minutes above the average. (The top city for coverage was Honolulu, Hawaii, with 97 percent; the lowest, Chattanooga, Tennessee, was 22.5 percent.)

Kansas City, Missouri, Councilman Russ Johnson, chairman of the City Council’s transportation and infrastructure committee, contends that the statistics are a little misleading; most major corporations with the largest share of employees, he says, are located outside the city center and the downtown hub of metro bus service. Johnson hopes that the new 2-mile streetcar system, scheduled to begin service sometime in 2015, changes the perception of Kansas City’s transit capabilities and influences big companies to locate within the city limits.

“Our urban core has had a lot of job exodus, and to a large degree I don’t think that’s the fault of the transit or transportation services,” Johnson says. “There is a lot of cheap land on the ring of Kansas City, and big companies are not willing to put employees where land prices are going up like downtown.”

Miller, a “board operator” who fills in on a variety of routes instead of sticking to a set course, doesn’t hesitate before offering his idea for my ride.

“The most challenging route is probably the 71 Prospect,” he tells me.

Why?

“There’s a lot of problems on Prospect,” Miller says. “It’s one of your lower-income areas, so there’s not a lot of positive up and down Prospect.”

He recalls the time he spotted a handgun under the jacket of a young man boarding the Prospect at a stop near 39th Street. “I told him, ‘I notice you have a gun inside your jacket there,’ ” Miller tells me. “I said, ‘There are other people who probably saw it as well and I am going to have to call it in. If the police come, you’re going to jail. You can’t ride out here with it.’ ”

The man got off the bus.

“I have to protect myself,” Miller says. “I don’t know if this person has two strikes or what. But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt to free yourself.”

Physical risk comes with the territory for intercity bus drivers, who have a median annual wage of $36,600, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Greg Hull, assistant vice president of public safety, operations and technical services for APTA, says drivers also face rates of diabetes, obesity and sleep apnea associated with sedentary types of work.

“There is shift work often involved, too, and until you can accrue the seniority to pick and choose the work that suits you, it’s more difficult in the beginning years,” Hull says. “But after two or three years dealing with the traffic and volumes of public, people who want to make a career of it do last.”

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Plenty of people do make a career of bus driving. According to APTA, 134,743 operators work for approximately 1,365 bus, commuter bus and bus rapid transit agencies in the United States. In 2013, 5.4 billion trips were taken on public transit buses.

“As an operator, you’re in essence the captain of the vessel,” Hull says. “A lot of people enjoy the challenge and responsibility. But those that find it’s not for them tend to weed themselves out.”

Ridership on the Prospect bus, as it heads south from 10th Street and Main, is fairly heavy this sunny Saturday afternoon, a mix of teenagers, single parents with young children, the elderly, the handicapped and working professionals. Some have earbuds in. Some read with practiced concentration. The driver, who asks not to be identified, appears courteous and attentive, always making sure to “kneel” the bus — lowering the hydraulic front end — to make boarding and departing easier for passengers.

Shirley Swan, 64, reminds me of my late aunt as she plops down in the seat in front of me. A retired merchandise handler from the J.C. Penney sort line, Swan tells me she doesn’t own a car and depends on the bus to get her around. Today, she is taking a total of six buses to visit someone near 38th Street and State Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas, and return to her own home, near Swope Park.

“I have to ride the bus, so I have no choice,” Swan says. “Sometimes people get on the bus and act stupid, but I try to stay out of the way of stupidness. You get drunks on the bus, and sometimes people get on and they don’t want to pay their fare.”

A few stops after Swan and I start talking, a woman gets on the bus, flashes a $5 bill and asks for change. A woman in the seat across from me reaches into her purse and hands the customer a dollar to help her pay the $1.50 fare, the charge on most metro Kansas City buses.

“That was nice of you,” I tell the woman.

“That’s the Christian thing to do,” she says. “Somebody might help me one day.”

Boarding the bus near 39th Street and Prospect is a family of four: Chris; his girlfriend, Amy; and two of their six daughters — Riemmie, 7, and Yazmyne, 6. Chris, who says he recently moved back to Kansas City from Chicago, isn’t a fan of KC’s bus system.

“It’s good, but it sucks because of the way they treat people,” he tells me. “Sometimes, they [drivers] will hit the gas real fast and won’t let people on. You got these young thundercats that get on the bus who are disrespectful and want to take things out on everybody else on the bus.”

Chris gives today’s driver high marks for running the vehicle’s air-conditioning as the outside temperature approaches 80 degrees. I relay the compliment to the driver, and as we talk he mentions his own desire to compete in the bus roadeo.

Unfortunately, the driver had a minor preventable accident during which he broke a front mirror by hitting a metro bus sign that was bent close to the road along Prospect. He reported it, knowing the small infraction would disqualify him from the next roadeo.

“I could have had a perfect record,” the driver says. “That’s how it goes.”

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During his practice run, Miller estimates he hit four cones. Now he’s prowling the sidelines, watching his competition. In the Sunday-afternoon sun, sweat beads on Miller’s shaven head.

When it’s Miller’s turn for his official judged run, the DJ cranks the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up.” Miller puts the bus in gear and enters the first gate for a clean start. But then he knocks over a cone on a reverse maneuver, looks well off the curb at the second customer stop, and grazes a last barrel while zooming through the diminishing-clearance channel.

“If I had to grade myself,” he says right after the run, “I’d give me a C-plus.”

A few days later, at Tuesday evening’s award ceremony, Miller learns his results: a respectable 13th place out of 53 operators in the 40-footer competition, with a score of 491 out of 700 points. His teammate McConnell ends up in 13th place in the 35-foot category, against 16 opponents, with 457 points.

Gabe Fernos, of Spokane, Washington’s Transit Authority, takes the large-bus title with a 649-point total, keeping back-to-back runner-up Schmidt from winning a sixth ring by a mere 5 points. But Beliz, Schmidt’s student, successfully defends his 35-foot bus-roadeo championship with a score of 653.

The Kansas City team of Jeff Clark, Thomas Seymour and Ralph Salmon wins the multiplex electrical system competition, making good on a vow to improve past showings. The crew earns a perfect score of 350, having found seven defects in the fastest time against 31 rival teams.

“The roadeo teaches you how to win gracefully, lose gracefully,” Clark says. “It gives you a sense of value and more purpose.”

Miller says you can count him among those with a rejuvenated sense of purpose. He has already circled his calendar for the 2015 International Bus Roadeo in Fort Worth, Texas.

“I’m going to work on the little mistakes I did make, win again in Kansas City and be in Texas,” he says. “I was telling a couple members of [KCATA] management that I’m ready to go at it. Once you attend [the international], it sets the bar higher. All I want to do is win.”

And do some driving along the way.

Tony Moton is a writer living in Los Angeles.