David Riley

@rilzd

People huddled in bus shelters along East Main Street to escape the frigid wind on a recent weeknight — their breath condensing under the streetlights, hoods and caps pulled over their ears, noses runny.

It's a scene that will disappear from downtown after midnight Friday, once the last bus pulls away from Main Street and Clinton Avenue.

If all goes according to plan, the lines of buses and crowds of passengers that have long defined one of the city's main drags will shift to the newly opened Downtown Transit Center. Buses are scheduled to take their inaugural trip out of the terminal at 5:40 a.m. Friday.

All buses will operate on a Saturday schedule on opening day.

The transition will put extensive planning by Regional Transit Service, which operates the public bus system, to the test. Customers will come face-to-face not only with a new $50 million facility, but a raft of updates to schedules, routes and policies.

"A lot of change is happening all at once," said Mike Governale, president of Reconnect Rochester, a public transit advocacy group.

The bus agency has done its best to get the word out, said Bill Carpenter, CEO of the Rochester-Genesee Regional Transportation Authority, which oversees RTS. It's now time to open and make adjustments as needed along the way, he said.

"We continue to practice all our drills to be prepared for the opening," Carpenter said Tuesday. "But we are ready to open."

Here's what to expect Friday morning, whether you ride a bus or travel through downtown:

New traffic flow

Buses no longer will stop or line up along a stretch of East Main Street from the Liberty Pole to the bridge over the Genesee River.

Most routes instead will start and end at the Transit Center, which spans a block of Mortimer Street between St. Paul Avenue and North Clinton Avenue. Bus stops near the terminal on St. Paul and North Clinton also will be discontinued.

Several people waiting for buses on East Main Street last Thursday night said they looked forward to passing the time inside soon.

"We can be somewhere warm," said Nickkia McCarthy, bundled in a heavy coat as she waited with her 3-year-old twins, Diandre and Diandra.

The Transit Center will bring another significant change for customers accustomed to riding about a dozen routes from one end of the city to another without stopping downtown.

These routes will split in two — for example Route 1, which traverses Park Avenue before heading up Lake Avenue, will become Route 1 Lake Avenue and Route 31 Park Avenue. Both will end at the Transit Center.

As a result, passengers who ride this route through downtown will now have to get off at the terminal and either pay an additional $1 fare or use a multi-ride card to board another bus to their destination.

Any additional cost is on hold for now — RTS will allow customers to board for free at the Transit Center through Dec. 31.

Suburban route changes

Some changes have stirred controversy with customers. One example: Several Park and Ride routes that drop off suburban commuters at downtown destinations — particularly on the west side of the river — will stop doing so Friday and go directly to the Transit Center instead.

Some customers are frustrated with that plan, as well as the fact that Park and Ride routes are expected to board outside the terminal.

"It really seems like they're discouraging riders from the suburbs from taking the bus because they're making it more difficult," said Jackie Mahany, who commutes from Webster to her job at Thomson Reuters on Broad Street.

The decision was difficult, but driven by a federal law that bars the transit agency from favoring one group of customers over another, said Crystal Benjamin-Bafford, RTS planning director. That meant the agency had to treat suburban routes equitably when compared with urban routes, which will now end at the Transit Center, she said.

It's one of a few scenarios that RTS says it will monitor after the opening. Carpenter said the agency needs to find a better way to get people around downtown and that his agency will work hard to address customers' feedback.

Sweeping schedule updates

New schedules for most routes will kick in Friday as they are re-routed through the terminal. In some cases, RTS is adding more buses to routes with high demand and either maintaining or trimming the number of trips on lesser-used routes.

Throughout the bus system, overall service will stay pretty much the same, if not improve slightly, Benjamin-Bafford said.

Governale, of Reconnect Rochester, said his group would encourage the agency to maintain or increase trips as much as possible.

"If it's there frequently, people will come to trust it and use it more," he said.

Customers also will have to get used to navigating transfers at the new terminal. Benjamin-Bafford said RTS plans to have routes come and go from the same gates for the sake of consistency.

Weeknight and weekend transfer schedules also will change system-wide. The trip planner at myrts.com and the RTS Where's My Bus app will update with all new schedules on Friday.

Ultimately, the Transit Center will bring "foundational change" to the bus system, Carpenter said.

"The Transit Center provides a level of information, a level of comfort, a way of making our system easier to understand, and when we make changes, to communicate it to our customers," he said.

DRILEY@DemocratandChronicle.com

Twitter.com/rilzd