Transportation

Normal Mayor Chris Koos is conditionally endorsing doing away with bus fares in the Twin Cities, but says he still wants to see a concrete proposal before fully committing.

The Central Illinois Regional Airport in Bloomington had minimal disruptions from a nationwide halt to flights ordered by the federal government Wednesday morning.

It could be time to discuss one of the proposals in a 2019 Connect Transit special working group report, says Normal City Manager Pam Reece, because it's an unusual development — an organization asking for less money instead of more.

Bloomington City Manager Tim Gleason and Mayor Mboka Mwilambwe said 2022 has been a good year for the city with COVID largely in the rear-view mirror and the city starting to get past the 50% to 100% COVID-related cost increases in materials and projects.

Passenger traffic is up 13.6% at the Central Illinois Regional Airport through the first three quarters of the year. Airport Director Carl Olson said ongoing recovery from the pandemic is not as fast as it was last year.

It's not unusual for members of a minority party to serve on transition teams for newly-elected statewide officeholders in Illinois. It's far less common to have a defeated opponent in a particular race on the team. But that's what has happened.

Connect Transit doesn't have enough bus drivers to run all its routes, so Bloomington-Normal's public transit system said Wednesday it will reduce weekday frequency on some routes to weekend levels starting Oct. 9.

The Central Illinois Regional Airport is the primary airport of the year, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation.

More safety improvements will soon be in place at the busy intersection of College Avenue and Kingsley Street in Normal where an Illinois State University student died last year while crossing the roadway.

Normal Mayor Chris Koos would like to see the community develop guidelines for a shovel-ready industrial park, something the Economic Development Council has begun to talk about. But during a WGLT interview on Sound Ideas, he shied away from specifying what the town should provide to make it happen.