BRISTOL, Tenn. — The Bristol Tennessee City Council is set to take up a contract Tuesday evening that would pay for a study of a possible bus line linking Bristol, Tennessee, Bristol, Virginia, and Abingdon.
The item is on the consent agenda. If it passes, the city would sign an $89,265 professional-services agreement with Kimley-Horn and Associates. Bristol Tennessee would sign as the fiscal and administrative agent for the Bristol Metropolitan Planning Organization, which is leading the work.
The MPO has already lined up $90,000 in federal and state grant money, so the contract would sit under the available awards and would not require a local match or extra city cash, according to a memo from transportation planning manager Micah Bray. The pot includes $40,000 in leftover federal transit planning funds, $5,000 in Tennessee state match and a $45,000 Virginia technical-assistance grant, with none of the total coming from member-city dues.
Those awards came through partnerships with the transit agencies in both Bristol cities and with Mountain Lynx Transit, the system that covers Abingdon. The MPO added the study to its work program after the Executive Board approved an amendment in November 2025 and named the organization the lead agency.
Two consulting firms sent proposals. A selection panel reviewed them and held interviews before recommending Kimley-Horn. The aim of the work is to decide whether a regular bus link among the three communities would work in practice and give residents another way to get around the region.
The study would look at fixed-route service between the two Bristol cities and the Town of Abingdon. An earlier staff report said the review is expected to wrap up around June or July 2027. Tuesday’s vote would move the hired work from the proposal stage into a signed contract.
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