Just around the corner from the decades-old bus station in downtown Burlington, a new state of the art transit center opened Thursday. City, state and federal officials celebrated the new downtown hub.
Burlington’s Downtown Transit Center was a decade in the making with a year of construction. The block-long wi-fi accessible platform includes an interior climate-controlled waiting area. It will also serve as a transfer point for over the road coach companies like Greyhound. Green Mountain Transit General Manager Karen Walton says a centralized location with previously lacking amenities was needed. “What we had before obviously was a sidewalk that had a little bit of a roof to it and we had a little kiosk with people. This is, on the inside it's got some IT in it. You're going to be able to sit inside and see when your bus is going to be showing up next. There's actually a map inside, an electronic map, that you could actually, say you're taking the Route 7 to the New North End, you can actually see where the buses are on this map. So you know where it's going to be. If you're at a bus stop out in the community you'll actually be able to look at your smartphone and say okay I didn't miss my bus because I was running you know at the last second I see that my bus is still you know two minutes down the street.”
Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger praised the cooperation between a number of groups and agencies that allowed the transit center to be completed. “One of the promises we made to the people Burlington is that we were going to get stuck and stalled projects moving again. I saw this is one of the key ones on the list that had been hanging out there too long. We had an opportunity to use the city right of way to ensure that we had a path to it to get it done and to not see this drag on for years and years further. I’m very excited about people being able to see the schedules from their smartphones. They will have up to date information when they do that. Um, now that we finally after 35 years of wanting this facility, now that we finally have it, let's make sure we use this facility to the maximum. Let's get the most we can out of this for the community.”
Vermont U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, said expanding public transit is critical throughout the state. “Increasingly more and more Vermonters are looking for ways, alternatives, to get around. And it’s important that when you build greener communities then we have to invest in transportation that makes sense. One of the biggest contributors to climate change are the greenhouse gases emitted by our transportation sector. If we design walkable communities where people will opt not to own a car we have to make darn sure they have a way of getting to all the different places they need to go. This center is a way of doing it.”
Governor Peter Shumlin applauded the city for its vision and environmental protection. "We have increased funding for public transportation our last six years in my administration by 50 percent. We've worked hard to build out more facilities like this and it's because we get the big picture and you do too. We all understand that if we can't get off coal and oil and move to a greener cleaner transportation system our kids and our grandkids have an unspeakably horrid future. That's kind of a big one. So what this center does is ensure that we keep getting it right that we've got a greener cleaner energy future.”
Following the speeches a Green Mountain Transit bus marked the opening of the new transit center by breaking the ribbon stretched across the street.
The last buses left the old station at 3:45 on Thursday and began taking passengers at the new facility.
