CDTA’S $4M improvement plan

The Capital District Transportation Authority gave initial approval to a $4 million ($27.5 million today) capital improvement program that included 75 new, radio-equipped buses, a new bus garage for Troy and two-way radios for the rest of the fleet. The CDTA would ask the federal government to pay two-thirds of the cost, with the rest divided between the state and the authority. One of the objectives of the program, said acting director Dennis Fitzgerald, was acquisition of 221 buses with an average age of six years, half of them air-conditioned and all equipped with radios. The CDTA also voted to condemn a piece of Schenectady property to be used for a new bus barn, then changed its mind; said several applicants were under consideration for the executive director post vacated by John. T. Doolittle Jr., and authorized Rensselaer County representatives F. Warren Travers and Maynard Dixon to monitor development of Troy’s Uncle Sam Mall with an eye to its transportation needs.

—Times Union, May 3, 1972