Mar. 7—WATERLOO — Bus riders will have to pay more attention on their routes after major route restructuring.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority is in its final stages of reworking its Waterloo routes. All that's left to do is configure what times buses arrive at stops. The new routes are expected to be implemented in the summer.
Routes in Cedar Falls — 6, 7 and 9 — will not be changed, yet. Depending on how the Waterloo routes are received, the company will look into the Cedar Falls one later.
Managers at MET Transit have been looking at rerouting its buses for the past five years, but the COVID-19 pandemic paused their progress. Once the world started to return to some sort of normal, the company picked up where it left off.
"We've vetted this thing for the last two years," David Sturch, MET's general manager said. "(The route operators) have been driving it in a car just to get an idea of the total time."
The current routes are at least a 40 minute round trip. The buses go in a circle around its route so if it takes someone 10 minutes to get to their destination, it could take another 30 for them to get back to the same location.
The new routes will have both an inbound and outbound bus. The passenger that would previously have to ride the entire ride back, could get on the other bus to get home quicker.
There will still be seven routes and almost all of the currently served area will continue to be served. MET took out some areas of the current route where its bus drivers rarely picked up passengers, such as Downing Avenue to Martin Road on Ansborough Avenue and the neighborhoods off of Dysart Road east of Hawkeye Community College.
Although the same areas will be serviced, some of them may be from another bus route.
Route 1 currently goes in a loop from the downtown Waterloo station, Goodwill Industries, the Social Security office and Kimball and Ridgeway avenues. The new route one will be split into two routes, 1A and 1B, and stick to Fourth Street. Route 1A will go to the United Medical Park and the Social Security office. Route 1B will go to the Tower Park Drive area.
Route 1 will not go to Goodwill, but that area, as well as North Star and Iowa Workforce, will be picked up by the new Route 8. Route 8 will also go to Crossroads Mall.
Crossroads Mall will be serviced by routes 2, 5 and 8.
With all the changes occurring, the company will not be asking the city for more money to run the new routes. However, MET Transit is proposing a new route, which would require more funding. Route 12 would go from downtown Waterloo to the Waterloo Regional Airport, and the surrounding businesses in the air and rail park.
Operating hours and service fees are not changing. Cory Ernst, MET's fixed route operator, said they need more drivers to expand the hours from 5:45 a.m. to 6:45 p.m.
The price of a ride for an adult is $1.50. Students, adults 60 years and older, people with disabilities and Medicare card holders can pay 75 cents for a ride. Ernst said if they moved to free transit, the cities would have to pay more.
"If you did go free, then you would have to probably charge more taxes to everybody," he said. "And I don't know if everybody would vote on that."
Although changes may look small on the map, Sturch said the outcome could be tremendous.
"Our goal is to have shorter times on the buses for everybody, better transfer options and to hopefully increase ridership," he said.
Anyone with questions or comments can email [email protected].
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