See when and where to catch the Memorial Holiday Fest shuttle downtown and SMTD’s popular lighted bus, Holly!
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Downtown buses will use a temporary transfer center lot while the permanent lot is being resurfaced.
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New fareboxes will be in service on all SMTD vehicles starting on Monday, August 23rd. They may look a bit more complicated than before, but they are in fact easy to use and will be more useful to passengers going forward.
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Shop local, stay local, with stops throughout each community near shopping, medical, pharmacy, etc.
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On Tuesday, May 25th, from 9am to 2pm, SMTD will host a follow-up COVID-19 vaccine clinic at the downtown Transfer Center off 11th Street between Adams and Washington.
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“On Our Radar” is intended to give interested members of the community a little insight into SMTD projects very close to implementation as well as items we want to get to but maybe not as quickly as other priorities.
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Front Door Boarding Resumes March 8th; Fare Collection and Night Service Resume March 15th
Springfield, IL – The Sangamon Mass Transit District (SMTD) announced today a return to normal operations later this month. Some policies will remain. Masks will still be required to ride for the forseeable future, a policy SMTD implemented last March and has since been made federal law through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and SMTD will continue the new cleaning frequency as a new part of standard operations.
Front door boarding will resume on Monday, March 8th, in preparation for the resumption of fare collection the following Monday, March 15th. Also on March 15th, SMTD will return to regular night service hours, which means buses will run hourly from 6pm to 11pm, with the last trip departing the Transfer Center at 10pm for its final run.
The only exception to the return of full service will be the urbanized area service to the communities of Chatham, Riverton, Rochester, and Sherman, which is scheduled to resume with new routes this summer.
“Nearly a year ago, the pandemic caused us to reduce service significantly, alter how we clean and maintain our fleet, and implement a number of policies and products to protect our employees and our passengers,” said SMTD Managing Director Steve Schoeffel.
March 17, 2020, SMTD reduced schedules to what is normally run on Saturdays, reduced Night Service, suspended urbanized area service to outlying communities, and suspended the collection of fares. SMTD also created bus cleaner positions to significantly increase the frequency and thoroughness of the disinfecting of buses, and polymer barriers in driver compartments were added to the fleet to create some physical separation between bus operators and the riding public.
At the pandemic’s first peak in March, ridership fell to roughly one third of normal ridership. Since then, ridership has rebounded to approximately 75% of pre-pandemic ridership.
“Over time, we have been able to increase schedule frequency, open our office to the public, and begin to look at getting back to pre-pandemic service,” Schoeffel said. “Now that the local positive test rate and hospitalizations have come down substantially and the vaccine has become more-readily available, we want to do what we can to get people back to work and help re-establish some desired normalcy.”
For schedule and fare information, visit SMTD’s website at SMTD.org and visit their Facebook page or follow on Twitter.
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Route 12 will detour for 10 days due to rail construction on South 5th Street.
Due to increased mitigation measures, all night service routes will be reduced by 3 hours beginning Monday, November 16th. The last buses leaving the transfer center will do so at 7 PM.
