[IMAGE]cdta.jpg[/IMAGE]On July 8, FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff traveled to Syracuse, N.Y. to deliver a check for $8.5 million, from the U. S. Department of Transportation's Bus and Bus Livability grant program. The grant is the final piece of funding needed for the new $18 million Central New York Regional Transportation Authority's (Centro) bus transfer hub in downtown Syracuse.

The new transfer hub is part of an overall revitalization plan to infuse new life into Syracuse's Central Business District. In addition to the new hub, city planners are working with developers to renovate an entire row of historic buildings and turn them into retail space and apartments. Those buildings are located at the intersection currently used by Centro as its main transfer point.

The new transfer hub will be located just a couple of blocks from the current location at Fayette and Salina Streets. Moving the major transfer location, known as Common Center, will help transform the four corners of the most congested intersection in Syracuse's Central Business District. Transit customers will have an off-street, open-air, but fully sheltered and supervised location with a dedicated platform section for each specific bus route.  

"The new transfer hub will have obvious benefits to our transit customers.  It will provide an enclosed, weather protected area to transfer between buses. This is something we haven't had before at our main transfer location," said Centro Executive Director Frank Kobliski. "The ancillary benefit to our community is that by removing our buses from the most central intersection of the city, development can move forward — therefore everybody wins." 

Construction on the new transfer hub will begin later this fall after remediation and demolition of the existing building is completed. The new hub is scheduled to open in late 2011.