Convenient bus service of 60 years ago recalled

Sometimes, we really don’t know how good we have it. Based on the suggestions of a recent Knoxville transportation alternatives workshop, it would be wise to turn the clock back about 60 years.

The consensus seemed to be to establish a bus or transit service to better handle commuter traffic in the greater Knoxville area, between the suburban areas and downtown.

One could turn the clock back to the early 1950s when J. M. “Pete” Lobetti Jr. operated 80 daily White Star Line bus schedules between Maryville and Knoxville. That was better service than the street car schedule the city of Knoxville provided to residents of Fountain City. And the buses ran most of the day and night for the benefit of those who worked late or shopped late.

They operated on both the two-lane Old Knoxville Highway and the two-lane New Knoxville Highway, more recently known as Alcoa Highway, really a misnomer. (Normally a road bears the name of its destination so Blount residents in the Alcoa area would not refer to it as Alcoa Highway when they were in Alcoa. Of course, to Knoxvillians it is Alcoa Highway. You can be on Via Roma in virtually any place in Italy except in Rome).

Lobetti was a good friend of Gen. Robert R. Neyland, head UT football coach, and that friendship and the outstanding White Star service led to the initiation of White Star bus lines service to UT’s home football games, a first. At one time well over 1,000 local residents parked their cars and “left the driving to us” as the bus line advertised.

While not at its peak in the 1950s, it was just a few years prior to that when there were 11,000 employees at ALCOA plants. At that time school-type “work buses” came to the three local plants from Etowah, Athens, Englewood, Tellico Plains, Madisonville and Sevierville for each of the three eight-hour shifts. Residents on Sevierville Road needing to get to and from town regularly rode the work bus from Sevierville as it passed.

Most of the work buses also stopped at Maryville Fire Chief Dewey Monroe’s sandwich shop to pick up passengers and allow workers to pick up food. It was located across College Street from the new Dandy Lions gift shop, former site of A. K. Harper Memorial Library, at the Church Avenue intersection.

For a few years after that the city of Maryville sponsored a limited bus service which soon ended from the inadequate use.

It wasn’t that the price of gasoline was so high that made buses appealing. In the price wars it got down to 19 cents per gallon or less. Automobiles weren’t so expensive but money was rather scarce.

And for many, the option was walking a couple of miles to and from town and carrying back home the items purchased. Taxis were more commonly used then as well.
And in the early 1930s, walking two miles to church or school was not uncommon. Those who could afford an automobile offered neighbors a ride. Few cars traveled the roads with a single person inside out of neighborly courtesy.

Traffic was lighter in the 1950s. Blount Countians employed on Gay Street in downtown Knoxville could drive from West Maryville to work without encountering a single traffic light. Try that today.

Instant travel to where we want to go and instant electronic communication go hand-in-hand. We suspect that only high speed, too-expensive-to-build interurban trains are about the only thing today’s commuters would even consider using.

All of us are part of a very spoiled society that enjoys living beyond realistic means. We don’t expect there will be a line of people form who want to turn back the pages to bus service.