|
Success,
Any Day Now
For
years, the advocacy group Citizens for Transportation has
been pressing to get shuttle service into the Northway Mall
parking lot. Since 1999, bus riders going to Northway Mall
have had to cross eight lanes of traffic and an unpaved embankment
when going to or from the westbound bus stop [“Shopping Dangerously,”
Newsfront, Nov. 13, 2003]. But their struggle looks to be
coming to an end.
“I
don’t have an exact implementation date, but it’ll be before
the end of February,” said Carm Basile, chief of staff and
director of marketing for the Capital District Transportation
Authority. “Hopefully sooner.”
“It’s
essentially going to be a connector bus between Northway Mall,
the regular bus stops for Route 5, and Colonie Center,” Basile
explained. The connector will be an extension of the ShuttleFly
service that goes along Wolf Road to the airport, said Basile,
but “instead of running the whole length it’ll just go back
and forth, which will allow us to do many more trips so people
won’t have to wait.”
Members of CFT are excited, but anxious after many false starts.
At their public meeting on Jan. 21, they expressed concern
that there had been no announcement of the service, which
they thought was supposed to start in January, and were disappointed
that no one from CDTA showed up to explain.
Assemblyman Robert Prentiss, who attended the CFT meeting,
spoke with CDTA executive director Stephen Bland the next
day, and reported that Bland told him the usual CDTA liasion
had been ill that day, and the shuttle service was just awaiting
“management agreements.”
—Miriam
Axel-Lute
|
Columns
& Opinions
