In the week since Secretary of State Tom Schedler sued the Capital Area Transit System to try to force the agency to move its downtown hub from outside the main entrance of the Old State Capitol, CATS officials have been meeting with city officials to try to develop a solution.
They won’t say with whom they’ve met or how much progress they’ve made, if any, in identifying potential sites for a new hub location. But CATS spokeswoman Amie McNaylor says the agency is “ continuing to work on finding a new location,” adding that “there have been conversations with various city officials.”
In the meantime, a hearing on the lawsuit in 19th Judicial District Court has been set for Nov. 17. Schedler’s suit seeks to force CATS by January to find a new location for its downtown hub, which the suit says blocks the Old State Capitol entrance on North Boulevard and poses a potential safety hazard to its many visitors, as well as a potential liability to the state.
CATS has not filed a legal response to the suit. But in a statement last week, the agency detailed its efforts over the past 18 months to find a suitable location downtown and the problems it has encountered along the way.
The location of the downtown hub first became an issue in March 2014, after CATS introduced a new route system that created the need for a downtown hub. North Boulevard previously had a bus stop, but the hub more than doubled the amount of bus traffic in that location.
As frustrating as the situation has been for the various parties involved, Planning Director Frank Duke says it is not uncommon. He has not been involved in the meetings with CATS and city officials over the past week, but as recently as a month ago he met with CATS CEO Bob Mirabito to suggest several potential temporary hub locations.
“They have been diligent about looking for sites,” Duke says of the CATS administration. “It’s just proving to be far more difficult than anyone imagined.”
Duke says he had similar experiences in other cities where he worked.
“Buses have very specific turning movement requirements, and they’re big so you have to find a location where the buses can make the turns without creating traffic problems,” he says. “It’s a challenge.”
—Stephanie Riegel
