Dixon moves forward with proposal to offer fixed-route bus service

DIXON – Reagan Mass Transit District is finalizing a proposal to offer a fixed-route bus service in Dixon to fulfill residents’ unmet transit needs.

The company began having conversations about offering the service more than a year ago. After receiving a grant from the Illinois Department of Transportation, RMTD contracted RLS & Associates, a public transportation firm based in Dayton, Ohio, to conduct a feasibility study that found it would be beneficial to implement a two-route bus network in Dixon, RMTD Assistant Director Steve Davis said in an interview with Shaw Local Radio.

“All of this has come together after about a year to say, ‘You can do it,’ so we’re pretty excited,” Davis said.

Beginning in February, the two companies conducted community data analysis, gathered input from residents and researched transit systems that were implemented in towns similar to Dixon.

Last week, Christy Campoll, a consultant from RLS & Associates, presented the findings at the Dixon City Council meeting and at the Lee County Board meeting. The two companies still are working together to refine and test the route, but the proposal is expected to be completed by early October.

The plan is for there to be a purple route and a white route that run every hour from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. The two routes will intersect in the middle of Dixon’s downtown area so riders will be able to transfer between the two routes, Davis said.

“[Dixon] has residents with unmet transportation needs,” Campoll said. “People who don’t drive or don’t have access to a vehicle would use [the bus route] for shopping, getting medical care, going to work or going to different appointments.”

One route would reach out to the Dixon Park District’s main building on Washington Avenue and run through the downtown area across the Rock River out to Kreider Services along Anchor Road. The other route would run from Dixon Square Apartments and Canterbury House Apartments on Lowell Park Road and continue through the center of town across the river on Galena Avenue to the industrial park, where the Dixon Reagan Transit Center is located, according to the proposed transit map.

Right now, RMTD still is deciding where to place the bus stops, which will be marked by signs around town. It expects there to be about 60 bus stops, Davis said.

According to the proposed transit map, potential stops include places such as grocery stores, schools, parks, residential spaces, medical facilities and more.

Campoll noted that Sauk Valley Community College would not be included in either of the bus routes because it isn’t located in a dense population area of Dixon. However, the routes will not be replacing any of the services that RMTD currently provides, she said, so “RMTD would be able to do a better job of getting more folks out to the community college because they’d have more capacity on this system with this type of service in place.”

RMTD currently offers an on-demand bus service that residents of all ages in Lee and Ogle counties can use by reserving rides to doctor’s appointments, the grocery store or anywhere they need to go locally. The fixed-bus route would be an additional service provided by the company.

With the additional service, RMTD is going to need to purchase new buses because its current vehicles only hold 12 passengers. For the fixed route, it’ll want to get 25-foot, low-floor-light transit vehicles that are compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act and have wheelchair ramps, Davis said.

In Campoll’s presentations, she estimated three buses costing about $600,000. She also estimated $60,000 to install about 60 bus stops and for software to implement real-time tracking of the transit buses, trip planning, automated voice announcements and passenger tracking.

Davis said RMTD also will have to hire more staff members to actually drive the buses on the fixed route, and those drivers will be required to have a commercial driver’s license because of the increased number of passengers.

To fund those expenses, RMTD is looking at a combination of state, federal and local funding sources. Right now, IDOT is its primary funding source, providing state funding for downstate transit programs and federal transit administration dollars for rural transit, Campoll said.

Under the best-case scenario, Campoll and Davis have estimated about a year until the fixed route is up and running.

Along that same timeline, RMTD also is planning to add a fixed-route bus service in Rochelle, Davis said.

The company conducted the same feasibility study in that area and found that because of Rochelle’s street patterns and population, it would make more sense to implement only one route. It’s planned to run through the downtown area out to its industrial park and will run on the same time schedule as Dixon’s bus service, Davis said.