The Ainslie Street Terminal was built as a replacement for the
Mill Street Terminal (which was located on Mill Street near Main Street and Ainslie Street) after a 1988 report, commissioned by the City of Cambridge, concluded that the existing facilities were totally inadequate and a replacement terminal should be constructed. This occurred around the same time as the construction of the
Charles Street Terminal in the neighbouring city of
Kitchener, which replaced an earlier Duke Street Terminal that had also been deemed inadequate. Local bus services at the terminal were originally operated by
Cambridge Transit. In 2000, Cambridge Transit was merged with
Kitchener Transit to form
Grand River Transit, managed under the
Region of Waterloo, as part of a general regionalization of formerly municipal services.
Launch of iXpress During the mid-2000s, planners began reorienting regional Grand River Transit service around the concept of a Central Transit Corridor, which was defined generally as the linear urbanized area, much of it following King Street, that comprised the cores of the cities of Kitchener,
Waterloo, and Cambridge. Ridership statistics indicated total ridership on the 302 Ion Bus was higher than on the same part of the 200 iXpress route during the same period of the previous year. ==Services==