MTD helps our communities thrive by offering individuals, organizations, and municipalities what they need to get to what matters. Whether it’s getting you across town to work, or doing our part to change mobility in our region, expand Champaign and Urbana's downtown, and strengthen the connections between the University of Illinois and surrounding communities for good, MTD is a reliable partner and we’re here when you need us.
Cultivating communities that thrive and cementing partnerships takes MTD into many aspects of the public sphere. In addition to serving Champaign-Urbana-Savoy, MTD is the transportation provider for University of Illinois students, faculty, and staff, as well as Unit 4 and District 116 middle & high school students. In doing so, we save our school districts and university millions of dollars every year in transportation costs. Elementary school students, Parkland College students, faculty, and staff, Research Park researchers, and Carle Foundation patients and staff are all part of MTD because they are a part of our communities.
MTD owns and operates Illinois Terminal in downtown Champaign, a revenue-neutral development that has been fully leased since it opened in 1999 and that provides increased access into and out of East Central Illinois. We are the 24th largest employer in Champaign County and take pride in having a workforce wholeheartedly committed to serving the public. Every year, many MTD employees assign their annual giving to United Way's Bus Passes for Social Service Agencies, an MTD initiative managed by the Community Foundation of East Central Illinois that funds half the cost of bus passes for social service agencies who choose to offer their clients access to safe, reliable transportation.
We routinely partner in intergovernmental agreements that range from funding feasibility studies for road and traffic analysis to doing our small part to assist first responders in very specific emergencies. From our leadership to our frontline, our employees serve on community boards and share their time and experience with hundreds of organizations. At MTD, we don’t just say “Commit to Yes,” we live it.
In addition to public transit, MTD champions all efforts to decrease the number of single-occupancy vehicle trips taken in our communities, thereby reducing overall congestion and the impact on our shared environment. Public transit, biking, and walking all have direct, proven health benefits, and they have indirect benefits, too. The bus you take today reduces the congestion and environmental damage to which another one-person car trip would contribute. We support efforts to "build up, not out," because denser city centers make transit systems more efficient and increase walking and bicycling.
The goals of being healthy and thriving also inform the long history of sustainability and environmental efforts that recently led MTD to launch MTD2071, a dual quality management and environmental management system that ensures that we meet our customers’ needs, our systems continually improve, and we help the earth thrive. We’re very proud of our ISO 14001:2015 certification and are working diligently to attain our ISO 9001:2015 certification.
So, yes, MTD is more than a bus service, and we also take immense pride in being a bus service. Filling the primary need of transportation for so many—right here in our own communities—is what we love about transit and what we love about coming to work each day. Because the people who ride transit, or consider the environment, or support a thriving community are our people. And while it seems that, individually, our people can be invisible to some, we not only see you, we are focused on you.