DeKalb - DeKalb city officials said they’re planning to use $17 million awarded through the state’s Rebuild Illinois program to construct a new facility to house public transit buses.
Most of that money came to the city recently, as Gov. JB Pritzker’s office announced Jan. 26 that the city of DeKalb had been awarded $12 million. That’s in addition to a $5 million grant awarded in 2020, said Marcus Cox, transit manager for the city. DeKalb’s allotment came at the request of city officials and was announced a week ago as part of Pritzker’s latest round of funding. The funds are distributed through the Illinois Department of Transportation.
“We were fortunate,” Cox said. “This year we asked for the $12 million, which we didn’t expect to get it all, so it was a pleasant surprise to see that we did.”
No official location has yet been determined for the new transit maintenance and operations facility, which officials said will improve rider experiences, according to a news release posted on the city’s social media Monday. According to the post, the DeKalb City Council appointed a seven-member committee tasked with recommending locations for the building.
The city’s fleet of 50 buses are serviced and operated through Transdev Services Inc, the same company that provides buses for the Huskie Line used by Northern Illinois University. Transdev, an international company that operates in 20 countries on five continents, became the city’s sole transit contractor in September 2020 after being awarded the city’s paratransit bid, ousting longtime paratransit provider Voluntary Action Center of DeKalb County.
Transdev’s facility at 1825 Pleasant Street houses all the transit system’s 50 buses, which Cox said isn’t ideal in the longterm. The city owns 25 transit vehicles and leases another 25 from Transdev. Store and maintenance of the vehicles is done at Transdev’s facility because the city doesn’t have its own designated center.
Officials have said a new center would allow for better storage for the vehicles and save money from costly maintenance that would be limited if the buses had proper shelter away from the elements.
An April 2021 proposal for DeKalb to contract with Canadian-headquartered architecture company Santec Architecture Inc. for $1 million was shot down by the City Council after aldermen voiced concerns over environmental impact to surrounding areas of the proposed location.
The architect had chosen a 30-acre piece of city-owned land on Dresser Road between the DeKalb County Health Department and DeKalb High School. The location had about 15 usable acres for a transit facility, according to city documents. The council opposed the proposal, but invited Stantec to return with a different location in mind that would still be close to NIU.
Since that time, the city’s request for state funding will help the eventuality of a new center take shape, Cox said.
“What this funding is set up for is the intended maintenance and operations facility that we are trying to construct to support the system, because right now all vehicles associated with public transit are housed through our provider Transdev,” Cox said. “The shop size is inadequate for what we need, the shop being used now was built back in the early 1990s.”
Although nothing is final as of now, Cox said the city remains in conversation with Stantec.
“We are going through the very early stages of trying to figure how large of a facility we need given our size and to find a location that would be suitable to eventually construct this facility that we envision,” Cox said.
The $17 million isn’t all DeKalb will need to build a new transit facility, however. Cox said it’s hard to estimate total costs because a location hasn’t been chosen.
“It could be $25M or $30M to construct the facility,” he said.
Part of the grant award process requires the city of DeKalb to select a location for the build, which will then need to be approved by the federal government through the National Environmental Policy Act, Cox said. The act requires federal agencies to assess environmental effects of a construction prior to any final decision.
That means the building plans can’t move forward until those steps are taken. Cox said he anticipates seeking additional funding at the federal level to pay for the project, through the Federal Transit Administration.
“The big thing the Federal Transit Administration wants to see before they are going to give anyone any supplemental funding is that progress is being made which we have,” Cox said. “But also there is additional funding to support the project. So in this case that $17 million is a substantial amount that we can show.”
And will the city struggle to staff the buses as has been the case in area public school districts?
Cox said the city’s transit department has had some challenges when it comes to bus driver shortages, but he doesn’t think it’s to the extent other areas have experienced.
“I don’t see much of a decrease in the number of vehicles, operators or employees that we need to support the service,” Cox said.