Heart of Lincoln Land

As somebody who loves and enjoys downtown living, I walk to most of my destinations and take mass transit when I need to go somewhere not within my walking radius. Having a bus system that goes where I need it to go is important to me. Really, I should be able to get anywhere in the city that anybody who drives a car does.

Right now, the Springfield Mass Transit District is asking for input on improving bus service in Springfield. I have a lot of ideas for improving the system, so I thought I’d post mine here. The SMTD has hired a consultant to study this and recommend changes. While I think some of the recommended changes are good, unfortunately, overall I think that they shortchange neighborhoods in favor of a few large destinations, and they will leave much of the city without service.

Personally, I think a good bus system should:
* serve as many neighborhoods as possible – equal access for people who can’t or won’t drive;
* have bus stops that are no more than 3-5 blocks away;
* enhance and encourage pedestrian friendliness – after all, you have to walk to the bus stop and walk after you get off;
* use streets that are safe for pedestrian use if possible, and if not, have the bus go directly to the destination so bus system users are not endangered by having to cross dangerous streets or intersections.
* Make it easy to use the bus and encourage new ridership! If the bus doesn’t go somewhere, it won’t get any riders there!

The consultant’s recommendations seem to take away or disregard many of these attributes. The consultant says “bus friendly” streets; I say “pedestrian friendly”. The consultant would like to reduce “route redundancy” (more than 1 bus route using the same street); while I agree, the consultant’s proposals simply shift route redundancy from center city areas to a very few high-traffic streets, which makes the system worse by serving fewer people and destinations.

The following are my ideas to improve the system. They are based on the equal-access and pedestrian-friendly guidelines I outlined above. I have ridden most of the routes in the system and have a good feel of where its strengths and weaknesses are.

Fix Bergen Park/Grandview

Extend Bergen Park to K-mart, add a loop that serves far east Cook Street

This route doesn’t operate on the same schedule as other routes (it’s only 40 minutes long, most routes are 30 or 60), so it can be kind of annoying when making transfers. In addition, it only travels in one direction most of the day. I say, make it longer, to fill up the 60 minutes and serve more destinations. Let’s extend it down Clear Lake to the shopping area around the east side K-mart, this is currently unserved and it’s always baffled me why. If you want to go there now, you have to walk down a section of busy Clear Lake Avenue with no sidewalk, and cross the dangerous Clear Lake / Dirksen intersection, which doesn’t have any pedestrian signals. From the K-mart on Clear Lake, add a loop that goes down Dirksen and serves far east Cook Street.

Add a loop to Bergen Park (red) to serve Sangamon Shopping Center and the Northgate subdivision. North 9th (brown) no longer needs to serve it.

To shave time off the proposed new North 9th route, let’s add another loop to Bergen Park to serve Sangamon Shopping Center at 19th and Sangamon, and the Northgate subdivision.

Finally, make it run in both directions. There you go – the new route is now Bergen Park/Grandview/Northgate, and will be much more useful than the old route. It will also be much more useful than the consultant’s replacement, which would split it into two routes, one of which would add redundant service to the northend Walmart and serve a stretch of North Dirksen that you cannot get off on. There doesn’t need to be 2 routes serving the northend Walmart, especially when there’s other areas (like the east side K-Mart) that have no service. The bus system should not choose where I want to shop for me.

Extend North 9th to Sandhill Road
This is something the consultant proposed with the ill-conceived North Dirksen route. I say, add the Sandhill Road segment on to North 9th instead. Just extend the terminus of North 9th from the aforementioned northend Walmart down Dirksen Parkway to Sandhill Road. Since my expanded Bergen Park/Grandview/Northgate route would serve Northgate, the Northgate section of North 9th can be eliminated to make it run faster. The faster travel time will allow the Sandhill Road segment to be added. Now on the northeast side, you have a fast route (North 9th) hitting all the commercial areas, and a good, convenient neighborhood route (Bergen Park/Grandview/Northgate) going through many different residential and commercial areas along the way.

Extend North 9th to Sandhill Road

This is the consultant's version. I marked it up. Notice the poorly planned purple North Dirksen route. My proposal will nix this route, and extend Bergen Park and North 9th to serve more destinations and fill in the gaps.

Make the UIS/Lincoln Land bus serve South Dirksen, South Taylor, and Southwind Park

Add a "via Dirksen" loop to the UIS / Lincoln Land route to serve both the Dirksen and Taylor corridors. It wouldn’t add any time to the proposed route. Use Dirksen one way, Taylor the other. The route would alternate the street order so it performs the loop both ways.

The nighttime Southeast route serves JC Penney at South Grand and Dirksen, and the consultant proposes extending the daytime UIS/Lincoln Land route to serve this also. But the consultant’s proposal just makes the route go back down Taylor. Why not make it go all the way, and serve both Dirksen and Taylor? One street on the way to UIS, and the other on the way back. The street order could be alternated (e.g. first bus is UIS via Dirksen, downtown via Taylor; the next one is UIS via Taylor, downtown via Dirksen; repeat.) It would add no time to the route, since it’s already going all the way down to Dirksen and back to Taylor anyway.

Having this route serve Dirksen would also eliminate the need for ugly half-solutions for South Dirksen like the proposed loop to the Southern View route to serve only a small portion of it. South Dirksen needs to be served since it contains shopping centers, employment centers, and the Greyhound station for which there is currently no service (funny how an intercity bus station isn’t served by a local bus route). I know Greyhound will likely eventually be moved downtown to the proposed new multimodal transportation facility on 10th Street, but for now it’s on Dirksen and it needs to be served.

Finally, let’s extend the terminus 4 blocks down Southwind Road to the new Southwind Park at Southwind and 2nd. This way, this special park designed for people with disabilities will be on a normal bus route.

Southwind Park Extension to UIS / Lincoln Land route

Save Colony West
This very useful route is on the consultant’s chopping block. The only change I’m making is for it to use Cherry Road since it’s shorter than Outer Park Drive. If I have to go to the mall (and it’s only when I have to), this is the route that I always use because it’s the shortest (both in time and distance). As a nice bonus, it also serves the Washington Park area, the Montvale shopping area, Robert Morris University, the Brentwood shopping center and the South MacArthur corridor including Town & Country Shopping Center. In the future, this route could even be extended down West Wabash, since it’s shorter than the other west side routes that serve this area. It would be a travesty if this route was eliminated. And no, based on my experience, it doesn’t have low ridership (the consultant’s excuse for removing it).

A split route 7. The light green route is West Lawrence which serves part of the West Governor route and an unserved portion of Chatham Road. The orange route is West Washington, basically the same as the current 7W West Washington route.

Split route 7 (White Oaks Mall) into two routes, and make them faster and serve more areas.
Route 7W would become West Washington and route 7S would become West Lawrence/South Chatham Road. The existing West Washington route would be kept pretty much intact and terminate at Prairie Crossing Shopping Center. Since Colony West would serve much of South MacArthur, I propose drastically realigning route 7S to go down West Lawrence Avenue and then down South Chatham Road. It will then jog through Jerome and follow its current path through the Chatham Hills and Westchester areas to Parkway Pointe and White Oaks Mall, where it would terminate. This would serve areas along Chatham Road that are unserved, and spare folks who live along the West Lawrence portion of the West Governor route from losing service. It would also provide easy access to Washington Park.

Now, let’s combine West Governor, Knox Knolls/Country Club, and Noble Avenue into a route.

The purple route is my proposed West Governor/Country Club/Noble Avenue route. It combines most of the areas from 3 old routes into a single new route, trying to ensure people in these areas do not lose service.

The consultant wants to make a huge hole in the west side by eliminating 3 routes (and adding major route redundancy to the Wabash Avenue corridor). This is my solution. By deleting the consultant’s proposed North Dirksen route, a new route can be added here. The new route will go down West Governor, sparing that area from having no service, after which it will go west down Monroe Street to serve the shopping areas there, then south through the areas served now by Knox Knolls/Country Club, and back east along Laurel and South Grand to serve areas along the Noble Avenue route that would also lose service under the consultant’s proposal.

The consultant’s proposal for the southwest side has a lot of completely unnecessary route redundancy on the Wabash and Highland Avenue corridors and in the Parkway Pointe shopping center. All this at the expense of a very large area of the southwest side. There’s absolutely no need for this when the routes could all be serving different neighborhoods!

The pink route will serve areas along far south MacArthur in addition to the areas served by the Lowell Avenue route. Once the MacArthur Boulevard project is completed, it could be extended to Knight’s Action Park.

So what about far south MacArthur? Lowell Avenue/Legacy Pointe is the solution.
This route would serve areas currently served by the Lowell Avenue route, then go west to Town and Country Shopping Center, and from there go down MacArthur and jog through Jerome via Iles and Wabash, then continue south on MacArthur to the new Legacy Pointe development. I propose extending it from there to the currently unserved Knight’s Action Park once the MacArthur Boulevard project is completed. The reason why I have this route run so close to the East Cook / White Oaks Mall route is because that proposed route would not take residents in this area directily to downtown, so they need another route that will.

And while we’re improving transit infrastructure, let’s make West Jefferson serve the airport.
West Jefferson is another route that doesn’t operate on a 30 or 60 minute interval, so I propose lengthening it. After going following its current alignment to the Stuart Park area, it would go north on Bruns Lane, east on North Grand, and an express segment would go north on Lincoln Avenue, east on Veterans, and north on Walnut to serve the airport. It would then go back down the same route, and follow Amos Avenue instead of Bruns Lane back to Jefferson, where it would follow Jefferson and Madison streets back to downtown. I know this route sounds kind of crazy, but if we can serve Sandhill Road I think we can serve the airport. It would also serve unserved areas on the northwest side. The other options for the airport would be making North 5th or North Walnut longer, but I think doing so would throw them out of the 30/60 minute time interval alignment.

The West Jefferson route would be expanded to take 60 minutes instead of 40, and all existing areas along the route would be served, in addition to an unserved section of North Grand and the airport. The route would go from downtown to all the way to the Stuart Park area on the far northwest side, then go up Bruns Lane, down North Grand and up Lincoln, Veterans, and Walnut to the airport. It would finally go downtown via Amos.

The narrow sky blue line is one idea for a more streamlined, simpler historic sites route. The existing one has too many loops. This route also goes to the Lincoln Depot – the current historic sites route doesn’t go there.

Streamline Historic Sites
Good route, bad implementation. I think it could be made a bit simpler, and still go to all the sites, including the Lincoln Depot which is unserved. Have it go west on Capitol first, and go around the State Capitol area counterclockwise, then go down by the Dana Thomas House, up 4th Street to the Governor’s Mansion and down Jackson and then 5th to the Vachel Lindsay Home, then down Edwards to 6th, and go all the way north past all the sites (including the Museum) to Carpenter Street, then west to 4th Street, going past Edwards Place and from there to the Tomb. From there, it’d go back down 5th Street to the Old State Capitol, east on Washington and then loop around the hotels and the Lincoln Depot before heading down 7th past the Lincoln Home visitors center and finally back up 6th and then Capitol to the starting point.

Make a nighttime UIS / Lincoln Land route by changing West Side Via MacArthur to a south side route
UIS and Lincoln Land are probably the most asked for nighttime destinations that are unserved. The excuse is that it’s too far away, but I think it could be done by using a route similar to the proposed daytime Lincoln Land bus (the only difference is it would end at Capital Area Career Center, instead of Southwind Park, and use the existing southeast route to South Grand). Then make the night West Side Via MacArthur route into a night south side route. It would serve far South MacArthur and Legacy Pointe, Stanford Avenue, 6th Street, Ash Street and other areas served by the night southeast route that would be unserved by making UIS/Lincoln Land into a nighttime route. There is no need to have two night west side routes following basically the same route, particularly when evening service is already sparse.

Anyways, those are my suggestions. I think Lincoln would want his hometown to have a bus system that “does the most people the most good”. Here’s some maps:
Current Springfield bus map
Consultant’s proposed Springfield bus map
Heart of Lincoln Land’s proposed bus map

If you have any other ideas for improving the system leave a comment in the comment section.

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