Toledo’s new main bus station will be the focal point of a public transit system that needs to thrive for the city to grow, local leaders said during a dedication ceremony Wednesday at the Cherry Street facility.
“We have an economy that is based on movement,” Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz said. “Only when TARTA is the best it can be will Toledo be the best it can be.”
Passengers will have to wait a week longer than previously announced, however, before they will start using it.
Stacey Clink, the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority’s interim general manager, said the opening date had been postponed from Monday to Aug. 19 because a fire inspection had not yet been completed, and the agency wanted some extra time to address any issues that inspection revealed.
Following the inspection, performed later Wednesday, the fire prevention bureau said that the transit hub had passed.
The delay, which means the station’s first day will coincide with the first day of classes in the Toledo Public Schools, also will give a transit authority contractor more time to finish rebuilding a sidewalk along the station’s Huron Street frontage to adjust its grade and expand it for space for passengers to board and exit buses.
“The concrete was supposed to be done today, but the rain hampers that,” Ms. Clink said.
TARTA paid $1.5 million last year to buy the former Goodwill Building at Cherry and Huron streets, and has since spent about $650,000 to remodel what once was Goodwill’s retail store into its bus station. All of the funding came from federal grants.
The station’s opening will allow the transit authority to discontinue its four-station downtown loop, which belts nine downtown blocks.
The transit hub features an indoor, climate-controlled waiting area with information and security booths, rest rooms, and on-site availability of bus passes. Custom furniture for the station won’t be delivered until next month.
U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) said the former Goodwill store’s reuse continues a revival for downtown Toledo.
“Every block that transforms, I consider a major victory,” Miss Kaptur said. “Every reuse, I consider a major victory.”
Along with the ribbon-cutting, TARTA invited riders to pick up information about how buses will stop at the station when their routes are moved there.
TARTA service will continue to employ “line-ups” for all downtown arrivals and departures, but those will no longer occur along the eastbound side of Jackson Street. Most buses will line up along either northbound Huron between Orange and Cherry streets or eastbound Cherry between Huron and Superior streets, but a card distributed at the Open House lists seven routes that will make their line-up stops on the westbound side of Huron, across the street from the bus station.
Those buses are the Nos. 12 and 14 routes to East Toledo, the No. 15 to Point Place and North Toledo, the No. 16 through the Polish Village neighborhood to Manhattan Boulevard and North Toledo; the No. 17 Lagrange Street bus to the Miracle Mile shopping plaza; the No. 19 Sylvania Avenue bus, and the No. 20 Central Avenue route.
Melissa Gunter, who commutes daily from East Toledo to her work in South Toledo, said the new hub will be a much more pleasant way to make bus connections.
“It’s easier access. The information booth is right there, and I feel safer with all the [security] cameras,” she said.
George Green, also of East Toledo, said the new facility reminds him of the main bus station in Cleveland, and he hopes its opening will be followed by expanded service such as more than one route serving East Toledo on weekends.
TARTA officials used the occasion of the station’s dedication to promote switching the transit authority’s source of local subsidy from property taxes now collected in Toledo and six suburban jurisdictions to a sales tax collected throughout Lucas County.
“With proper funding, we can become an innovative, effective, viable transportation option” that will be a model for other cities, Ms. Clink said.
“This is not a stopping place for TARTA, not a stopping place for transit. It’s a jumping-off place” to get transit where it needs to be in Toledo, said Francis Frey, president of the transit authority’s board of trustees.
First Published August 7, 2019, 4:53 p.m.
