The Mass Transit District of Urbana-Champaign successfully restored the campus bus system to a pre-pandemic service quality last week. The final changes were implemented on Friday, adding more than 100 operating hours to all daytime, evening and weekend campus routes.
“With this final phase, both UI and non-UI service has been restored to help our community thrive,” said MTD in an online announcement last week. “We appreciate the patience and understanding shown by our customers and community throughout the recovery process.”
Buses will now appear at campus route stops every 10 minutes instead of every 15, 20 or sometimes 40 minutes at certain locations, like they did in previous semesters.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying quarantine regulations, MTD had to alter bus routes and route frequencies. MTD was also plagued with daily driver vacancies throughout and following the pandemic, hindering its ridership numbers significantly.
“We have expanded our fleet … we have a contingency fleet and more buses,” said Amy Snyder, deputy managing director of MTD. “It enables us to support our maintenance teams to keep up with unplanned and planned maintenance. Our scheduling department anticipates a higher number of unexpected absences each day.”
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Drivers also receive better benefits than in years past, including a 10% higher starting wage and a better insurance premium plan, which is now completely covered by MTD, according to Snyder.
“I think, for students, that’s transformative — you’re not gonna need to plan a trip or … look at a schedule,” Snyder said. “People are also gonna see that it’s more comfortable to ride because we’re spreading out those capacities.”
As for MTD’s future, Snyder expressed excitement for the introduction of two new hydrogen fuel-cell buses coming to Urbana-Champaign, completing the now 12-vehicle fleet of zero-emission MTD buses.
“We’re excited to get those out into service regularly, where they’ll get assigned to a new route every day,” said Snyder. “I’m looking forward to the community getting to enjoy them.”
Information on route planning and other services offered by MTD can be found on their website.
“As an organization, we’re really excited. This is an accomplishment that’s taken a lot of work,” Snyder said. “Our practices have changed forever to make sure that we can maintain this.”
