Work to update the buses on the Connective Corridor routes will begin over Winter Break, and government officials will begin the final construction on the corridor this spring by renovating the physical routes.

The Connective Corridor project is a collaborative effort between the city, the university and Centro. The project was approved by the Syracuse Common Council in June, and some of the changes will be apparent after Winter Break. Ground construction will begin with the redesign of Forman Park, a small area near the Crowne Plaza Hotel, and continue on to East Genesee Street and University Avenue.

The city will be converting University Avenue into a two-way street and making general improvements downtown, such as building bike and walking paths, installing additional lighting and fixing curbs.

These renovations will hopefully accomplish the corridor’s mission of providing the students with a cultural link to the city, said Robbi Farschman, Syracuse University’s director of the Connective Corridor.

Syracuse will be holding a community meeting to review streetscape plans on Dec. 15 at 6:30 p.m. in the Tiffany room of the Genesee Grande Hotel. Students are welcome to attend the meeting and express their opinion of the design plans, said Farschman, the director of the Connective Corridor.

Owen Kerney, the deputy director of the city’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, said he expects the project to carry on well into next summer but hopes it will be completely finished by the time classes resume in the fall.

The funding for this multimillion-dollar project came from a variety of different sources, including SU, the city, Onondaga County and federal grants, Kerney said.

Centro used a chunk of its federal funding to purchase three new buses on the corridor and install new technologies on 10 to 20 buses that intersect with the Connective Corridor route.

The hardware is what Steve Koegel, Centro’s director of marketing and communications, calls ‘bus-time technology.’ Select buses will be equipped with GPS locators, and a dozen or more bus stops will have LED signs that tell travelers exactly what time the bus will get there.

‘If customers have the ability to anticipate up to the minute when the bus will be there, it will improve the convenience,’ Koegel said. ‘It takes a lot of the guesswork out of it. You’ll actually have pinpoint knowledge of how much time you have before the bus arrives.’

Centro will rotate buses off the corridor routes over Winter Break to install and test this innovative technology, Koegel said. The technology should be operational by Jan. 17, which is by the time students get back to school, he said.

Ilana Goldmeier, a freshman in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, said having bus-time technology will make it easier to get to classes in The Warehouse downtown.

‘The buses are already on time for the most part, but sometimes they don’t show up when they’re supposed to,’ Goldmeier said.  ‘Having a time when it is supposed to be there doesn’t account for the time in between.’

egsawyer@syr.edu

Published on December 5, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Liz: egsawyer@syr.edu | @3sawyer