Effective Monday, March 30th, Sangamon Mass Transit District (SMTD) will begin running an emergency reduced schedule, which is similar to current Saturday schedules with the addition of the three hours of night service currently being run during the week. The current schedule books show the Saturday hours for all routes in color. Southwind Park service will remain Saturday only. Saturday service is basically hourly service with the seven busiest routes running periods of every-thirty-minutes service.
While there will not be formal public comment during this emergency that would generally be offered for significant reductions in service, the public is invited to submit comment via email on SMTD’s “Contact Us” page at SMTD.org or via the Facebook Page. Anyone still needing inbound trips to the transfer center before 6am for work is asked to call the office at 217-522-6087 as soon as possible to discuss other transportation options.
“This emergency reduced schedule reflects our ridership decrease of around fifty percent and our desire to reduce our operators’ potential exposure to members of the public who may be sick,” said SMTD Managing Director Frank Squires. “We are continuing service for those that need it, and we’re keeping our trained employees working so we can ramp back up when the appropriate time comes.”
SMTD is able to keep operators working by shifting many to “report” runs, which are backups for when people call in sick, have to go home or are otherwise needed to help out with regular service and adding cleaning duties to those schedules to increase disinfecting of buses already happening daily. This schedule also ensures SMTD is prepared in the event several operators call in sick at the same time should an outbreak occur locally.
“With the extra manpower, we will be able to change out buses at mid-day, in effect doubling our disinfecting to twice-a-day and increasing deep cleaning,” said Squires. “Some operators will be cleaning while others will be shuttling buses back and forth to the transfer center and Junction Circle.”
Also beginning Monday, passengers will be asked to board at the rear doors, instead of the front, unless they have a disability and need the wheelchair ramp or the bus kneeled. This new policy is an effort to further protect operators from contact with passengers. Passengers are also reminded that SMTD bus travel is limited to essential travel only, and no alcohol is allowed on SMTD buses.
“In these unusual circumstances, we’re doing all we can to protect our operators who are still coming to work and still providing service to those in our community that have no other form of transportation,” added Squires. “We will keep these schedules and policies in place until such time as federal or state officials order otherwise, the COVID-19 pandemic has run its course, or the situation at the time appears safe to return to regular operations.”
