Located in downtown Reno is the Reno Transit Center's 4th Street Station, erected in 2010. The following text is taken from the RTC website to describe the funding of this project:
The development of RTC 4TH STREET STATION on a 2.5 acre site between Lake Street, Evans Avenue, 4th Street, and Plaza Street was approved by the RTC Board in 2002. Paid for with 95% federal dollars from Washington, D.C., it is a critical project for our community and for downtown Reno. The project was awarded to West Coast Contractors of Nevada, with an April 10, 2009 groundbreaking. The new transit center opened in October 2010.
The community will get a much needed facility replacing RTC CITICENTER, a worn and tired facility that doesn’t have sufficient room to accommodate current service much less the community’s future needs.
In these tough economic times, contractors submitted bids nearly $8 million less than we projected it would cost to build 4TH STREET STATION.
Construction of 4TH STREET STATION will bring nearly $13 million into this community very quickly adding good jobs right away and improving business activity all over. Those jobs are especially important right now. Local companies will work to build the station and other businesses, big and small, that those companies use will benefit. Those are dollars reinvested here.
The community’s new transit stations are paid for with Federal Transit Administration funds--95% comes from Washington— which can ONLY be used for capital purposes such as building new facilities or buying new buses.
Using this money for RTC 4TH STREET STATION is a good investment that will help us serve the community as it rebounds to recovery. Although service is being reduced in the near-term, RTC fully expects these new facilities to serve an expanded transit system in the future.
This project is partially funded by American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act of 2009
Something to Note
People ask why we built a transit station when routes are being cut and fares are increasing. Simply put, the federal capital funds being used to build the transit stations cannot be used to operate buses. This is not the Regional Transportation Commission’s decision, it is federal law.