This was supposed to be a big, festive fall at the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District.
For one thing, the MTD would be marking the 50th anniversary of its birth: on Nov. 24, 1970, Champaign-Urbana residents voted by a nearly 4-to-1 margin to create a tax-supported bus system to replace the privately owned Champaign-Urbana City Lines. Its owners had kept threatening to go out of business without a subsidy from Champaign and Urbana.
âWe had planned a whole big thing for our 50th. And
we tabled it all,â said Managing Director Karl Gnadt. âWhat can you do? No one can go out to celebrate or anything. So basically, all weâve done is had a soft rollout of a new logo.â