ALBANY TRANSIT SYSTEM
The Albany Transportation Center opened on March 27, 2023. The expanded lanes have improved operations and the contemporary terminal provides amenities for those who rely on public transportation.
TRANSPORTATION CENTER
A 2015 article reported the city’s Transit System’s eight buses make “between 85,000 and 90,000 passenger trips” a month on the system’s 11 routes. Albany Transit’s director explained public transportation in Albany is “a necessity for most of our passengers” due to the number of residents living in poverty. 198 Those who rely on the city’s public transportation system were denied a quality terminal for twenty years due to the city commission’s indifference and inaction. 199
The commission, within months of Bo taking office, selected a site and thereafter solicited bids from qualified contractors. Alan Mauldin wrote: “[The Transportation Center] was unceremoniously handed down from year to year – years that surpassed two decades – before the most recent Albany City Commission voted to OK the site location and funding that greenlit the project that is expected to be the centerpiece of plans to revamp the city’s old Harlem District”. 200
The Transportation Center has a meeting room, internet access and computer terminals. Digital boards, with arrival and departure times, are prominently displayed. The configuration of the property allows buses to enter and exit the premises without changing direction, resolving a safety issue presented with the former terminal. 201
The commission has recognized the significance the former bus station had for the Albany Movement. A wall mural of protestors sitting in a downtown drug store which refused to serve them covers the wall on the west side of the main entrance. A bronze statute, honoring Ola Mae Quarterman, who was arrested and jailed in January 1962 when she refused to move to the back of the bus after paying her fare, will be placed in a plaza facing Jackson Street. A plaque, commemorating the five students who were arrested for attempting to segregate the terminal in November 1961, will be mounted on the wall in the waiting area.
Federal dollars provided eighty percent of the $11.5 million budget for the project. 202 $2.5 million in SPLOST was dedicated to construction of the Transportation Center.