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Centro bus riders wait in the corner shelter on James Street after an 8 to 9 inch snowfall in the city on Feb.14, 2014.

( Dennis Nett | dnett@syracuse.com)

SYRACUSE, N.Y.--In the future will riders take a bus, a train or a streetcar to get to some of Syracuse's most popular destinations?

The Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council has been studying that question and will reveal what may lie ahead for the city's mass transit system at a public meeting on Nov. 10. The event is from 4 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., at the Sky Armory, 351 S. Clinton St., Syracuse.

Centro, which provides bus service in Onondaga and the surrounding counties, commissioned the Syracuse Area Regional Transportation Study or SMART 1. It is an outgrowth of an earlier transit study done for the Interstate 81 replacement decision, said Mario Colone, SMTC's program manager.

The SMTC is looking at options for moving people quickly along Centro's most heavily used corridors stretching from Eastwood through Centro's downtown hub to Onondaga Community College and from University Hill to the Regional Transportation Center and Destiny USA.

The study has considered the concept and feasibility of "bus rapid transit," and a streetcar or light rail system, Colone said. Each category contains several options and the SMTC will be presenting its recommendations for each at the upcoming public meeting.

Centro provided 11.5 million rides in its system in 2015, slightly below the previous year. The service competes fiercely with automobiles, said agency Vice President Steve Koegel. When gas prices fall, so does ridership, he said.

"Syracuse is one of the best commuting towns in the country. We have a very good highway system, a very good roadway system," he said. "It's difficult to compete with the automobile when it's very easy to get to anywhere in the community in 20 minutes."

One of the attractions of bus rapid transit or light rail service is that there are limited stops, allowing riders to travel more quickly to their destinations, Koegel said.

Koegel and Centro Chief Executive Officer Richard Lee recently traveled to Albany to view its rapid transit service called Bus Plus. Albany is a good comparison for Syracuse. Both deal with Upstate's weather, the populations are the same and both have similar numbers of college students, Koegel said.

The bus rapid transit system could include specially branded buses that only stop every quarter to a half mile at specific bus shelters, those that travel in bus-only lanes, or are equipped with technology that would hold traffic lights green for approaching buses to allow them to travel quickly through intersections, Colone said.

How much would the options cost?

Documents on SMTC's website don't give a dollar amount. The bus rapid transit option carries with it the least amount of investment compared with building a streetcar or light rail system, which is listed as the highest investment, according to an earlier SMTC presentation.

If Centro decides to move forward with a plan to revamp its system, the agency could apply for federal grants that could pay for 80 percent of the project, Colone said.