Transpo: the public corporation

1968–TODAY · THE SOUTH BEND PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION CORPORATION

1968: The South Bend Public Transportation Corporation is a municipal corporation, and its officers date its public ownership themselves: Transpo's general manager and CEO, briefing the South Bend Common Council's Public Works committee on 8 August 2016 in the city's own minutes, stated that Transpo is a municipal corporation known as the South Bend Public Transportation Corporation, doing business as Transpo, and that it has been operating under municipal ownership since 1968 under state code. The compiled transit record agrees in substance: in 1968 Transpo was formed to continue operations from the privately operated Northern Indiana Transit. One telling in the compiled city transportation history differs — it has the City of South Bend in 1969 purchasing a bus for a new private transit startup, after which a local contest nicknamed the service "TRANSPO" — and it is carried here as the conflict it is: the corporation's own account, given to its own council, fixes municipal ownership from 1968, and that account governs this record. The corporation reckons its lineage without a break to the South Bend Railway Company of 25 May 1885, and one of its first directors embodies the span: Emil "Lucky" Reznik, for whom its modern headquarters is named, sat on the corporation's board from its establishment, as the trade press recorded at the building's opening.

Stations and headquarters: The public system's geography moved downtown and then south. Transpo's buses were based at the old Notre Dame Avenue facility — the streetcar company's plant of 1910, at 901 East Northside Boulevard — until 2010, a century of continuous transit use on the one site; its general manager Maurice Pearl described that northside facility at its retirement as a structure that had started out as a milking shed in the 1890s and been adapted many times over. Downtown, the transfer point became a building in stages: a transfer center opened in Mishawaka in October 1978, and in 1998 Transpo opened its South Street Station in downtown South Bend, a 14,800-square-foot intermodal building on the north side of the former New York Central tracks, which remains the system's hub. In November 2010 the corporation moved its administration, maintenance and operations into the new Emil "Lucky" Reznik facility at 1401 South Lafayette Boulevard, built for transit on remediated ground where a Studebaker factory had stood since the late nineteenth century, and certified to the LEED environmental standard in the fleet record's account — the plant the agency still occupies.

The system's shape: Transpo runs a hub-and-spoke bus network over the two cities, South Bend and Mishawaka, with service to the Notre Dame campus community and Roseland besides: routes radiate from South Street Station and the Mishawaka Transfer Center, Monday through Saturday, with no Sunday service. Two survivals of the streetcar age rode inside the modern system for a time. From 2004 the corporation ran a Downtown Trolley in the downtown streets — not a streetcar but a bus built as one, an American Heritage Streetcar replica by Optima, 28 seats, working a thirty-minute downtown circuit at fifteen-minute peak frequency, Monday to Friday from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., as the agency described it in 2010; the year the trolley replica service ended is not fixed in the record reached, and the gap is named. And the Notre Dame line's descendant is route 17, The Sweep, the campus shuttle between Notre Dame and Saint Mary's — free, like the whole system is to the universities' students and staff on presentation of identification, under the pass arrangements the next entries document. In 2014 the corporation began converting its aging diesel fleet to compressed natural gas with the arrival of fourteen New Flyer buses, and the fleet record shows the CNG succession continuing in deliveries of 2017, 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Sources:

1. City of South Bend, Public Works and Property Vacation Committee minutes, 8 August 2016 — General Manager David Cangany's briefing: the municipal corporation, municipal ownership since 1968 under state code, fixed-route and paratransit service in the South Bend and Mishawaka city limits.
2. The CPTDB transit record, from Transpo's published history and pages — the formation of 1968 to continue Northern Indiana Transit; the Downtown Trolley's equipment, circuit and hours as the agency described them in 2010; the LEED-certified 2011 facility; the CNG fleet deliveries from 2014.
3. BUSRide and Mass Transit magazine, 2011–2013 — the Emil "Lucky" Reznik Administration, Maintenance and Operations Facility, opened November 2010, at 1401 South Lafayette Boulevard, on the remediated Studebaker ground; Reznik's board service from the corporation's establishment; General Manager Maurice Pearl on the northside facility's milking-shed origin.
4. ChicagoRailFan, South Bend transit facilities — the Notre Dame Avenue base, 901 East Northside Boulevard, used by Transpo until 2010; the move to 1401 South Lafayette Boulevard; South Street Station's place in the system.
5. The South Bend Tribune of 1 October 1978 and 1 January 1997, as cited in the compiled record — the Mishawaka transfer center opened October 1978; the South Street Station intermodal project and its 14,800 square feet.
6. The compiled transportation history of South Bend — the differing 1969 account of the city's purchase and the naming contest, carried as a conflict against the corporation's own account.