The Urbana-Champaign Mass Transit District (MTD) held a virtual public hearing on to inform the public about the fall service changes and take questions as needed on earlier today. 

The first major change the MTD presented was the proposed new iStops and route eligibility in the University District.

“In August every route that serves iStop will be fare-free, this is expanding into new areas including White Street, Research Park, and also included Green Street from Oak to Lincoln,” said Jay Rank, planning manager at MTD.

This change will improve the overall safety and efficiency of bus stops around campus in order to ensure that they are more accessible to students.

The 1/100S Yellow and the 2/20 Red route at Marketplace Mall will change to run from Anthony to Neil to Marketview to Market.

“We’ve been working with Marketplace to address some of the concerns about safety, pavement, and landscaping so we proposed changing the routing of a few routes to avoid using the south half of the Marketplace outer drive,” Rank said.

The MCORE has finished some of the construction on streets across campus and as a result there will be changes to various routes.

The Sixth and Armory stops will be consolidated in order to help traffic flow and abide by the MCORE changes.

The 1/100 yellow route will change to Sixth to Armory to Fourth to Gregory, from Sixth to Gregory to First while the northbound route operates in reverse. This will improve overall safety and technical issues.

The 10 Gold Eastbound and Westbound will revert to its regular routing and the 13N Silver will end at Lincoln Square at 5:20pm, and won’t continue as the 13S Silver due to the end of construction.

The 22/220 Illini will consolidate the stops at North Goodwin Avenue and eliminate the stops at Goodwin and Clark.

“There are too many stops on North Goodwin Avenue and this one is a safety concern because it can cause visibility issues for both pedestrians and vehicles,” Rank said.

Timings and routes for the community stops will also be changed in order to accommodate residents.

The 70E grey route will be extended by 22 minutes which would allow residents to return home at a later time. The 50W Green will also be modified by two minutes to prevent a layover along Philo Road. 

The bus routes for the middle schools and the high schools will also be altered due to rideshare needs decreasing.

The 16A pink will eliminate the use of their third bus because of the rideshare decrease and allocate that additional resource to the 1 Yellow route instead. This will allow the 1 Yellow route to accommodate more space for kids as there will be two buses being used for this route.

There will also be a total of eight route changes due to construction taking place at Edison Middle School in the fall. The routes in question are the 1 South Yellow #1, 1 South Yellow #2, 16A Pink #1, 1 North Yellow, 7 West Grey, 9B Brown, 3 Lavender, and the 7 East Grey.

“Champaign Unit 4 will be planning construction for Edison Middle School in the fall and this would result in some students being temporarily relocated to Columbia School,” said Dave Goldenbam, the service planner at MTD. “The MTD agreed to prepare changes to existing morning routes serving Edison Middle School beginning this fall to assist those students needing transportation to Columbia School.”

These routes are expected to start 5 minutes earlier and add Columbia School to their maps to accommodate the students.

The MTD will respond to the concerns in regards to the fall changes from May 20, 2020 at 12:00 PM until May 27, 2020 at 12:00 PM. The staff will respond to comments on their website.

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