Message to the Public: Thank You!

February 27th, 2009

During the second week of February, TCAT invited the community to a series of public meetings.  TCAT wanted public involvement for two reasons:  first, to explain the draft proposed route changes to the public, and second, for TCAT TDP staff to listen to and understand what the community thought of the route changes.

Over 200 community members attended a public meeting with TCAT TDP staff.  TCAT received over 90 written comments and over 120 emails about the proposed route changes.  Also, TCAT collected over 200 responses via an online survey about the proposed route changes.  In total, the community gave TCAT over 400 statements, ideas, and suggestions about the proposed route changes.

The TCAT TDP staff are incredibly thankful that we work for a community that is engaged and cares about public transit.  We are humbled by your stories:  how our neighbors depend on our services to get to work, school, shopping, and play; how our proposed changes might affect our neighbors' lives.  We take our work extremely seriously, and while we know that we can't make everyone happy, that won't stop us from trying anyway--especially with this reminder of the important role public transit plays in Ithaca and Tompkins County.

Due to the overwhelming quantity and quality of comments, the TCAT TDP staff are unlikely to be able to respond to each message individually.  We want to assure you that every comment we received was logged, categorized, discussed, and evaluated in the context of the plan as a whole and other similar comments received.  We will respond to questions in the order that they were received; please be patient and we will do our best to respond personally to as many messages as possible.

Moving forward, the TCAT TDP staff will revise the proposed route changes based on as many of the public comments as possible and practical.  We will work on putting together an entire service package, including finalized route maps and draft schedules.  We hope to meet with the community again to evaluate our revised route changes in early April 2009.  Although we haven't finalized an implementation date yet, TCAT expects to make the route changes either in November 2009 or January 2010.

Once again, thank you for your interest, your suggestions, you honest yet respectful criticism, and your words of support.

Sincerely,
Mr. Joe Turcotte, General Manager
Mrs. Nancy Oltz, Service Development Manager
Ms. Nicole Tedesco, Analyst & TDP Project Manager