Fall 2020 Schedule Changes

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.

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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.

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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.

Restore SMTD Service Plan Released

Download the Restore SMTD Service Plan

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Today, SMTD is releasing our plan for returning to a full service schedule in the coming weeks and months as the state and city re-open.

• 3,000 rides per day would trigger consideration of return to full weekday, night and Saturday schedules (currently 2,400 riders per day);

• Masks will still be REQUIRED to ride;

• Chatham, Riverton, Rochester, Sherman service will not return until Fall 2020;

• School supplemental routes will not return until students return to campus;

• Fare will continue to be waived until further notice;

• Details at www.SMTD.org

In short, a ridership threshold of 3,000 passengers today will indicate the need for us to return to full weekday, night and Saturday schedules, and we anticipate that happening in the next couple of weeks. However, there is no date certain yet, as we continue to monitor ridership (approximately 2,400 passengers on Tuesday) and guidance from the county and state departments of public health and the CDC.

We anticipate no service restoration to Chatham, Riverton, Rochester and Sherman until this fall, and supplemental routes serving local high schools and UIS remain suspended until those institutions return students to their campuses. Regular routes to UIS continue to run on their emergency schedules. Passengers needing service to Chatham, Riverton, Rochester and Sherman can contact our Access Paratransit service to schedule rides in those areas until regular service is restored.

Face-coverings WILL continue to be REQUIRED into the foreseeable future, and no decision has been made yet on charging fare. So, rides will remain free for the time being. As service changes and any changes are made to fare policy, we will communicate to the public well in advance.

SMTD COVID-19 Response Update (3/14/2020)

Service Updates:

• Route 114 UIS Express evening service has been suspended until UIS students return to classrooms.

• All supplemental service routes have been suspended until District 186 resumes classes.

• All other buses will continue running regular service until further notice.

Preventive Measures:

• Bus cleaning frequency has been been increased.

• Staff is being instructed to follow CDC guidelines on avoiding illness and what to do if you’re sick.

• Staff is being provided appropriate supplies like hand sanitiser, gloves, etc.

• Additional, more thorough deep-cleaning utilizing maintenance overtime is being considered.

• We continue to monitor county, state, and federal health agencies for the latest information.

How to Stay Informed on SMTD Service Status:

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We recommend creating an account on our Bus Tracker page and subscribing to the routes you use often so that you are notified as soon as something changes. We will also be pushing out manual alerts through our Google Transit feed so riders are notified if a route is suspended.

Schedule Updates for January 2020

A new schedule will begin on January 6th, 2020 and this gives us an opportunity to update some routes to address reported issues and make the system perform better overall.

Route 6 - Clear Lake / Junction Circle

Now that the Ash Street underpass is open, Route 6 will resume using Ash Street instead of detouring around it via Iles/Oberlin. Some slight changes to the time checks on the inbound portion of the schedule were also made to account for the difference in travel time.

Route 7 - West Washington

Route 7 travels to and from the west side of Springfield and downtown, providing connections both at the downtown transfer center and at White Oaks Mall. These connections must be reliable for them to be useful and the current version of the route is not as reliable as it could be. For comparison, here is a graph of the average on-time performance of Route 7 versus that of Route 3.

Daily On-Time Performance Averages

Though Route 7 sometimes reaches as high as the low to mid-90’s on some days, it’s much more variable - and thus less reliable - than other routes such as the 3. And since the 7 connects to other routes downtown and at the mall, this can create on-time issues that cascade through the rest of the system.

To remedy this, we will be removing a total of 19 stops on Route 7 that have been identified as having low ridership or as being close enough to another stop to warrant consolidation. This brings the average stop spacing of the route from 920 feet to 1,163 feet and allows the bus to reach higher speeds.

The map below shows the stops we will be removing in black, with the remaining stops in blue. Click here to open the map in a new tab/window.

There will also be some slight adjustments to the inbound time checks to ensure the bus does not waste any time getting downtown.

Route 902 - Southeast Side Night Service

The newly-opened Ash Street underpass will also allow the 902 to resume using Ash from 6th Street to MLK Drive inbound. No changes will be made to the timetable.

See a one-sheet flyer here.