City leaders celebrate bus shelter renovation, talk upcoming bus app

CEDAR RAPIDS - Last December city bus patrons returned to what had been the city's flood-damaged, abandoned Ground Transportation Center bus depot, no longer having to endure the modular-home shelter that had served as a temporary depot since the 2008 flood.

On Monday, city leaders celebrated the fully finished depot project, a $10.5-million endeavor that no longer requires buses to back out into traffic and no longer requires pedestrians on First Street SE and Fourth Avenue SE to dodge buses and to cross the street to get where they are going.

Brad DeBrower, the city's transit manager, said the city had succeeded in its depot renovation goals. The depot is 'safe, more functional and attractive” and 'better than before the flood,” he said.

At the Monday morning event, City Manager Jeff Pomeranz announced that the city would be adding an application for smartphones and for the city's website that will allow bus patrons to see the locations of buses in real time and to get accurate time estimates of when the bus will arrive.

'It's important in Iowa as we share extreme weathers such as today,” Pomeranz said of the coming technological addition to the city's bus service. 'And whether it's 10 below zero outside or stifling hot, it's not fun to stand and wait for your bus any longer than is needed.”

The city manager said the city also will be adding four new buses to its fleet, making 22 new buses added to the city's total of 30 in the last five years.

Both Mayor Ron Corbett and Pomeranz said a city needs a good transit system because not everyone in the community has access to a vehicle.

'We at the city believe that every resident should be able to get to where they need to go on a daily basis in a clean, safe and affordable manner,” Pomeranz said. 'Our city buses and transportation system provide an affordable means for our citizens to get to work, to go to school, get their shopping done or go to the doctor.”

Longtime bus patron Mitchell Miles, 64, looked on at the morning event and said he wasn't sure what all the hullabaloo was about. He said he rolled with the punches after the 2008 flood, making due with the temporary depot as he said he is doing now with GTC depot.

As for the city's coming smartphone app, Miles said he is not going to spend the extra money for a smartphone. The buses usually run on time anyway, he said.

A recent report from federal and state transportation officials to the Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization, of which Cedar Rapids is a part, suggested that the Cedar Rapids Transit Division consider adding a second hub so all passengers don't have to come downtown to the GTC depot to transfer to another bus.

DeBrower and Sandi Fowler, the city's assistant city manager, said DeBrower was the one who suggested that the city look to a second hub to improve service. DeBrower and Fowler said the city is likely to add a second hub sometime in the future.

They also said the Iowa Department of Transportation continues to look at how bus service might begin between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. City buses now go to The Eastern Iowa Airport on a regular schedule, and getting buses from the Iowa City metro area to the airport on a regular schedule might be the easiest way to start a Cedar Rapids-Iowa City bus connection, DeBrower and Fowler said.

DeBrower said regional bus service won't return to the city's downtown depot. He said the city asked bus companies if they wanted space in the renovated GTC depot, and they said they didn't. Those buses stop out by the airport now, he said.

Pomeranz on Monday recalled how the City Council at one point after the flood had embraced an 'expensive” plan to abandon the GTC and to build a new 'intermodal transit facility” on the site of the PepsiCo warehouse operation just off downtown. Pomeranz said it would have cost some $10 million just to get PepsiCo moved to a different location.

Both he and Corbett talked about how they visited the city's temporary bus depot in late 2010 to see bus patrons standing in line in the bitter cold to board a city bus. The historic value of the GTC depot and the relative affordability of the GTC renovation came into clear focus on the day, Pomeranz said.

DeBrower on Monday said the green paint on the lower part of exterior posts outside the depot mark the level the Cedar River climbed in the June 2008 flood,

Missing from Monday's depot ceremony was a brass plaque placed in the GTC depot at the time of its opening in 1983. The plaque honored those responsible for the building, including its principle architect, Scott Olson.

'They threw it away after the flood. It got the heave-ho,” Olson, now a City Council member, said good-naturedly.

Olson, whose name represents the 'O” in OPN Architects Inc., left the firm in 1993 for commercial real estate.

The depot renovation was funded by $7.4 million from the Federal Transit Administration, $1.5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and $1.6 million in revenue from the city's local-option sales tax.