Here’s everything you need to know about the SMTD Fall schedule beginning on August 24th.
School Routes
As of this post, District 186 schools are still set to resume some form of in-person classes in August. We will be running our supplemental service routes to/from those schools as long as that remains true.
Urbanized Area Routes
The urbanized area commute routes servicing Chatham, Rochester, Sherman, and Riverton/Spaulding will continue to be suspended for the Fall schedule. We are completely redesigning the UA routes to better serve their respective communities. You’ll be hearing more about these routes soon.
Route 15 - UIS / Prairie Crossing
The construction of an overpass at Iron Bridge Road and Woodside Road is slated to begin later this year and is expected to last at least 3 years. While this will be fantastic for the Interurban Trail and those travelling between Chatham and Springfield, the construction unfortunately makes the current inbound path of our Route 15 impossible.
Inbound segment of Route 15 (Meijer to UIS) with future overpass construction highlighted in red.
Unlike overpass construction in denser areas, we cannot detour around the affected intersection by simply changing a few blocks of the route. The outbound trip runs about 40 minutes, so turning around at Meijer and coming back the way we came would obviously take longer than 60 minutes.
Thanks to our automatic passenger counters we’re able to see how many passengers board or deboard at a given stop. For our analysis of Route 15 we grouped the stops into 10 distinct segments in order to determine which parts of the route were most useful to passengers.
Route 15 Segment Usage
From this data we were able to determine that the majority of passengers utilized Route 15 to get either to or from UIS, Junction Circle, and Chatham Hills. Given this information and the geometry left to us by the construction on Woodside Road, we have decided that the best course of action is to continue to service the majority of passengers as best we can. Route 15 will no longer service the Westchester, Prairie Crossing, Woodside, and Toronto Road segments of the route and will instead double back along the same path it takes from UIS to Chatham Hills. This will be inconvenient for some in the areas the route no longer services, but this will preserve service for most passengers who use Route 15 while making the route bi-directional and more useful overall.
Because this new pattern is so similar to what the 114 UIS Express bus would be doing in the evening, we are cancelling the 114 and adding Route 15 to Night Service. The last Route 15 trip will leave UIS at 9:55 PM and end at Chatham Hills at 10:22 PM.
Route 1 - North 5th / Sand Hill
The inbound time check at N. Grand & 5th has been moved back 5 minutes to make it easier for the bus to get back downtown on time. Instead of :19 and :49 of the hour, Route 1 buses will leave the N. Grand & 5th Street at :14 and :44 of the hour.
Route 10 - South 11th / Stevenson
The time check at the Secretary of State office has been moved back 2 minutes to help the bus get to Big Lots earlier. Instead of :23 and :53 of the hour, Route 10 buses will leave the Secretary of State stop at :21 and :51 of the hour.
