By: Diane Benjamin

I rarely FOIA anything I don’t know exists. A FOIA to Connect Transit didn’t reveal any bus purchases from Champaign.

The January payments did: PDF page 17 https://connect-transit.com/file/3390/02%2025%202025_BoT%20Meeting%20Packet.pdf

I do know the failure of the electric buses forced Connect to pull old buses out of mothballs.

The bus list doesn’t show any hybrid buses. Maybe it hasn’t been updated for these. I can’t be certain but I think this was the cost of wrapping these buses:

A reader took these pics, they needed to be wrapped with Connect’s logo.

.

It shouldn’t be a surprise these used buses were cheap, it would be nice if they admitted buying them however. The Champaign bus system is showered with the same federal and state money as here.

The Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District taxes directly through property taxes. They lose more than twice what Connect Transit does:

.

See Connect’s PDF page 16 at the link above. Their budget from IDOT is $13,035,312. See why the Federal debt is $35 Trillion? This repeats across the country.

Connect would love to tax you directly. They can never be allowed to be their own transit district. Your property taxes will be even higher and both Bloomington and Normal will not lower spending. The dollars will just be redirected to other items.