Champaign — Streetcar Proposed

Rail Transit Online, December 2003

A team of transportation consultants has completed a $500,000 alternatives analysis for the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (MTD) and has determined that a rail or guided bus system is needed to handle growing ridership.  In their report, Washington Infrastructure Group and Systra said expanding the existing bus service is not an option.  Instead, a fixed network costing perhaps $178 million, using either low-floor rubber-tired trams with a single guide rail or conventional streetcars, should be considered.  Another alternative would be higher-capacity, double-articulated buses incorporating some form of guidance technology that would cost an estimated $104 million, although the consultants declined to recommend it.  “It's not quite ready for prime time, at least in the United States,” Ruby Siegel of Systra told The News-Gazette.  MTD Managing Director Bill Volk said he agrees with the consultants’ report.  “We're just pumping more buses into the system, and the system can't handle it,” Volk told The News-Gazette.  “There's no place to go.”  The study found that adding more conventional buses would exceed street capacity.  The rail system would serve the University of Illinois district and the downtowns of Champaign and Urbana, linking up with a restructured bus system through timed transfers.   According to Steve Schlickman of Schlickman & Associates, a lobbying firm hired by the MTD, the region can make a good case for federal funding of streetcars.  “The existing system is failing,” he told The News-Gazette.

Web site: www.cutransitalternatives.com/