Big changes are on the horizon for the city’s bus system.<\/p>\n
The City and Borough of Juneau’s Capital Transit is planning to open its new Mendenhall Valley Transit Center located off Mendenhall Mall Road on Monday, Nov. 7, which will include a new parking lot, bike lockers, electric vehicle chargers and outdoor shelter for riders. The city also announced it will be updating its route schedule after six years of little to no change. The new schedules can be found on Capital Transit buses and online at https:\/\/juneaucapitaltransit.org\/<\/a> under “news.”<\/p>\n Routes are changing in part due to the new Valley Transit Center, which will require buses to change their routes to accommodate the new center. According to Matt Carpenter, the lead operator for Capital Transit, the routes have also needed an update for a while.<\/p>\n “Most of our routes haven’t received any sort of update since 2016 and we know that our buses are having a hard time staying on schedule because the timetables are out of date,” he said. “We’ve been missing a lot of transfers so this was a good opportunity to take a look at how to get our timetables more realistic to get the buses back on schedule.<\/p>\n Carpenter said the core service routes — Route 1 in Douglas, Route 3 and 4 in the Mendenhall Valley — will be very similar to what they are at currently, and said people should only expect a few minutes of change.<\/p>\n The more impacted routes are the “commuter routes” Carpenter said, and also noted that the express service will also see a more significant change.<\/p>\n Richard Ross, the transit superintendent said the city conducted a rider survey in May asking for feedback from riders to figure out which routes should change and what should stay similar and found 76% of riders surveyed wanted a simpler network with more frequent service as opposed to more specialty commuter routes.<\/p>\n