CDTA eyes Saratoga Springs site for new bus garage

PHOTOGRAPHER: Stephen Williams

The Capital District Transportation Authority is pursuing land in the W.J. Grande Industrial Park as a site for a Saratoga County bus maintenance garage.

The CDTA board, meeting Tuesday in Rensselaer, voted to authorize negotiations to buy a 10-acre lot off of Geyser Road on the north side of Cady Hill Boulevard, across from the Quad/Graphics printing plant.

It was selected from among eight potential sites in the Saratoga Springs area that were under consideration for the long-planned new maintenance center.

“This was the obvious best location,” said Arthur Young, a member of CDTA’s planning and resource development committee.

A land price still must be negotiated, and an environmental review must be performed before the agency can pursue the project.

The Grande park, owned by a private family trust, has been a major industrial park for more than 30 years. It already includes the storage and maintenance facility for Saratoga Springs school district buses and is a trucking hub because of warehouses located there.

Momentum for a CDTA garage in Saratoga County has been building in recent months because of the growing number of transit buses running in the county.

In April, the federal Department of Transportation announced $245,000 in funding to develop a master plan, schematic design and preliminary financial plan for the new garage.

CDTA’s core ridership remains in the Schenectady-Albany-Troy area, but it has initiated new Saratoga County routes since 2007.

CDTA has storage and maintenance facilities in Albany, Schenectady and Rensselaer counties but not Saratoga County. It services its Saratoga County route buses from its Schenectady garage on Maxon Road Extension, which doesn’t have room for significant expansion.

The Federal Transit Administration has said the proposed facility would save money in the long term by reducing nightly bus runs between Saratoga routes and the Schenectady storage garage.

The planning is for a 55,000-square-foot facility that would permit indoor storage of 50 buses. Staff at the garage would do preventive and minor maintenance, bus washing, refueling and local dispatching.