Asheville bus riders react as city weighs route cuts

Riders who use Asheville buses to reach a doctor’s office, a job site or a campus stop faced a sharper tradeoff than a simple schedule tweak: the city’s draft ART network would remove some direct service in places such as MAHEC, the Social Security Office, Kenilworth Road and Grove Park Inn to fund faster buses on busier corridors.

The City of Asheville released the draft network on May 21 and opened a five-week public comment period. City materials say the plan is meant to preserve the current balance between ridership and coverage while shifting slightly toward ridership, increasing frequency on some routes, improving connections and making buses more reliable on time.

For daily trips, the impact lands in specific places. In the south, the draft would cut service at MAHEC, while adding 15-minute service south of downtown along Biltmore Avenue and McDowell to Biltmore Village. The Shiloh route would become a one-way loop to speed trips. In the east, service would disappear from the Social Security Office and Kenilworth Road, and Tunnel Road would become a regular 30-minute Route 5 instead of the current pattern that alternates between 20- and 40-minute service. In the north, the draft would remove service from Beaverdam Road and Grove Park Inn. In the west, 15-minute service would stay in place from downtown to the River Arts District, and Deaverview would be rerouted via Patton Avenue.

The city says those changes would help more riders reach jobs and frequent service. Under the draft, 8% of residents would live near new 15-minute stops and 37% would be near stops with service every 30 minutes or better. City materials say 31% of jobs would be near 15-minute service, and the average resident could reach about 9,000 jobs within 45 minutes by walking and transit.

That rebalancing has real stakes in Buncombe County because ART is not a small circulator. The system runs 18 routes from the ART Transit Station at 49 Coxe Avenue and serves Asheville and the Town of Black Mountain. The standard one-way fare is $1. The city says the broader review, known as the ART Comprehensive Operational Analysis, began in March 2025 with Jarrett Walker and Associates.

The timing adds pressure. Asheville’s bus system operating contract expires this year, and City Council authorized a nearly $55 million new operator contract on March 26. As the city weighs route cuts, riders are being asked to decide whether a faster bus network is worth losing direct stops that many people use for work, school, medical visits and errands.