When coach Gary Pinkel saw a Columbia Transit bus one day, he thought something was amiss. Then it hit him. The bus was red and blue, the colors of dreaded MU rival University of Kansas.
He brought it up to KSSZ/93.9 FM talk show host Tom Bradley and a campaign started in August 2010 to change the colors of the Columbia Transit buses to MU black and gold.
“I could not believe we didn’t do this years and years ago,” Bradley said. “And I hate to give Gary trouble, but I wish he would have complained sooner. But it was great to have his story. It was so funny. He came to town and said ‘Why do they have KU colors on their city buses?’ I mean that’s all he saw was KU colors. And you know what? My personal opinion, I think they were ugly too.”
Columbia Transit unveiled its new black and gold bus design Monday outside of Mizzou Arena. Bradley led the presentation, which included Columbia Mayor Bob McDavid.
“You can look for all the buses in the future to be black and gold,” McDavid said. “We’ll call this one Big Mike, because we have Mike Alden and city manager Mike Mathis.”
McDavid said in the future the city can look forward to 40 black and gold buses, all painted with a set of tiger’s eyes on front and a tiger tail in back. There are currently three of the newly-designed buses on the road.
“Transit is a big operation,” Bradley said. “Millions are spent on it. It should look like something you want to get on. People want to charter those because they look so good. It’s like a limousine. Are you going to ride a bus that looks like crap or ride a bus that looks like this? And we have more students riding all the time, with parking being such a premium.”
The new buses were designed by Brendon Steenbergen of Big Fish Creative.
“It looks much better in person than on a laptop screen,” Steenbergen said. “We were excited to get the eyes and the tails on it because we knew it would be black and gold, but it makes it pop, having those tiger features. I told Mike Alden the real challenge of making a black and gold bus is making it not look like a school bus.”
The project began about seven months ago. Although creating the design options did not take too long, there was a month-long back-and-forth between the athletics department and city officials before they decided on a design.
“It’s a good project,” Columbia Transportation Manager Kenneth Koopmans said. “It had to go through the transportation commission and then to city council. There were different choices, different alternates, but I’m happy with the one selected. It’s very sharp.”
Koopmans said the 40 black and gold buses should decrease the bus headway, which is the time it takes a bus to pass by a location. Current headway averages 40 minutes, but up to 80 minutes between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.