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.