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Redesigning the R.T.S. Terminal from the Inside Out

Reconnect Rochester members put pencil to paper this month and turned the Mortimer Bus Terminal layout inside-out. Literally.
Last month RGRTA hosted a pubic workshop to invite ideas and comments from the public on our new RTS Transit Center external link. Reconnect Rochester was there and we offered our best critique. After all, the success or failure of this project will impact us all for decades to come.

The following is the result of a collaborative effort by Reconnect Rochester members to contribute to, or try to improve upon RGRTA’s preliminary proposal (PDF, 5.7mb). The ideas and visuals outlined below are by no means a finished product; but just enough to convey our ideas. As always, we welcome your feedback in the comments.

Essentially, we are looking for a scheme that is:

  1. As compact as possible
  2. As safe as possible
  3. Has least impact on adjacent assets
  4. Provides for pedestrian scale on Mortimer
  5. Can be recylced for other uses if/when bus operations are altered

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Rochester’s Case for a Streetcar Line

The following article was published at RochesterSubway.com on 2010/02/16. Two weeks later 6 citizens got together and Reconnect Rocheseter was born.

Photo simulation of a new Rochester streetcar on Main Street.

America seems to have taken a renewed interest in mobility. Maybe due to President Obama’s recent commitment to high speed rail—or perhaps the positive results seen in towns like Portland and Denver have caught our collective attention. Whatever the reason, from the top down, people are rethinking our automobile-oriented culture—and getting excited about the possibilities.

There’s also good reason to focus on transportation as a way of jump-starting economic development. Industry requires access to people. And people need to have easy access to centers of employment. Continually improving access makes further development possible. Interrupting access will have the opposite effect. Likewise, doing nothing or simply maintaining existing infrastructure for an extended period of time will also hinder development.

For 30+ years Rochester has relied on the infrastructure choices it made in the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s. At that time we made development choices that encouraged our population to emigrate from the downtown core. We scrapped our extensive streetcar system, choked off downtown with the construction of the inner-loop, and paved super highways to take us from the city to the NY State Thruway and beyond. Since then that’s exactly where our money, our workforce, and our future have gone—down I-490 and out of state.

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