The construction of the Springfield-Sangamon County Transportation Center begins Monday, August 23rd. During this first phase of construction the SMTD transfer center lot will be completely resurfaced. This is expected to last until at least early December. Until then, buses will use a temporary transfer location established just north of it, across Washington Street.

Because the temporary lot is bordered on both the north and south by one-way streets, some slight changes had to be made to over 20 different routes. Despite this, the removal of the Capitol & 9th stop (#2047) from Route 9 was the only stop removed from any of the routes affected.

The temporary lot will have 4 stops: A, B, C, and D. These stops were given new, unique ID numbers so that we could publish accurate schedule data to Google Maps ahead of time without interfering with current operations. Here is a breakdown of each stop, its ID, and the routes that will use it:

• Stop A (#2511) - 0E, 1, 3, 4, 5, 902, 905

• Stop B (#2512) - 2, 7, 12, 901, 903

• Stop C (#2513) - 8, 9, 10, 11

• Stop D (#2514) - Urbanized Area routes, school trippers

Supervisors will be on hand at the temporary lot next week to help passengers get to their buses.

Other Changes

There some other changes going into effect on Monday, but nothing as drastic as the move to the temporary transfer center. In fact, to the extent that these changes affect passengers at all, it will be to make routes more useful by adding stops or increasing on-time performance.

Route 5

A new stop (#2515) will be added on North Grand between Walnut and Bond to service the plasma and dialysis centers.

Routes 12 and 14

These routes will no longer wait out time behind the County Market on 4th Street, as those time checks have been moved to St. Joseph & 5th. The lanes are wider at the new time check location, allowing traffic to flow around the buses if needed.

Routes 13, 15, 16, 410

Buses headed east on Wabash to the Junction Circle transfer point will turn onto Park to avoid traffic at the Wabash & MacArthur intersection. New stops will be added at Junction Circle & Douglas (#2516) and at the southwest corner of Junction Circle & MacArthur (#2517).

Route 15

The name of the route will change from “UIS / Chatham Hills” to “UIS / Seven Pines.”

Urbanized Area Routes (410, 420, 430, 440)

Some time checks will be removed from these routes to give operators more flexibility. They will still be stops, but operators will not be required to wait at them until specified times.

• 410 - Chatham Square (#2437), Park & White Oak (#2428)

• 420 - Walnut Street Winery (#2452)

• 430 - Crossing Drive (#2382)

• 440 - Lucky Horseshoe (2495), Hilltop (2487)

Don’t Forget - New Fareboxes!

SMTD’s new fareboxes will be active beginning Monday! Check out our previous news post for more information.