With construction of the Springfield-Sangamon County Transportation Center in full swing, the next few years will involve substantial changes to the city of Springfield and, as a result, the SMTD bus system. Underpasses between 9th Street and 11th Street at Carpenter, Ash, and Laurel have been completed but more construction lies ahead, and bus routes will need to continually adapt to the shifting landscape. January of 2022 will include service modifications on the 10th and the 24th.
Winter Run Bid - January 10th, 2022
The second Monday of the new year will see timetable changes to night routes in order to increase their on-time performance. The results of these optimizations will help when determining more significant changes to night service routes in the future.
The new schedules are shown below, with changed time checks highlighted in blue.
In addition to the night service changes, we will be temporarily suspending the operation of the supplemental routes servicing Lawrence Education Center (221, 222, 223) due to low ridership.
Transfer Center Move - February 21, 2022
Layout of the new transfer center bus stops. Note that stop A will not be available until work on the building to the west is completed.
By Monday, February 21st, work on the new transfer center lot will be completed to an extent that will allow us to move operations back over from the temporary lot we’ve been using since August 23rd, 2020. The new layout will be similar to the current layout of the temporary transfer center lot, with 4 bus stops and one center island, but there are some differences that make the new lot a unique challenge.
Buses will only be able to access the lot via Washington or via Adams at 11th. Getting to either entrance will initially be made more difficult due to 10th Street rail closures on Monroe and Capitol that are scheduled for early 2022. Additionally, the new Transfer Center Bus Stop A will be unavailable until the main building is completed, leaving only stops B, C, and D at our disposal.
Here is a breakdown of which routes will be using each stop:
Stop B (#2315) - 0E, 3, 5, 9, 10, 903, 905
Stop C (#2316) - 1, 2, 7, 8, 11, 901, 902
Stop D (#2317) - 4, 12, urbanized area routes
Which transfer center stop a route uses has largely been dictated by the geometry of the route - which direction it needs to go when it leaves, and which direction it will be approaching from as it arrives. This time around we were able to factor in another source of information: historical farebox data. Our new fareboxes were put into service on August 23rd, 2021, the same day we moved to the temporary transfer center lot, and since then they have been amassing a considerable amount of information on how passengers use the system. By cross-referencing transfers being issued and transfers being used, we were able to see which routes were transferred to and from the most, and have those routes use stops B and C so that the majority of passengers won’t need to leave the center island at the transfer center.
We appreciate the patience of passengers as we navigate the next few years of construction for the new transportation center. We will do our best to accommodate construction while preserving service.
