In 1945, Springfield City Council voted unanimously to purchase of the privately owned Springfield Gas and Electric Company, also the operator of the city transit system. This transaction created
City Utilities and subsequently CU Transit. Springfield's transit system remains one of the few in the United States to be operated through a city utility company.
Transit centers The Bus has had 2
transit centers in its lifetime. The first was built in 1981 on McDaniel Street and Patton Avenue. It operated from 1981 until May 9, 2016, where operations moved to the new transit center on College and Main. The first transit center was then abandoned until its demolition on March 29, 2017. Talk about a new transit center began in the early 2000s, transit officials expressed the need for a new transit center due to lack of space, preventing expansion and being too small for buses themselves. Planning begun in 2006 after the
Federal Transit Administration provided $1.63 million for the new facility and $1.47 million in 2008. A site for the location on College and Main was chosen in September 2012 and bought in October of that year. The new CU Transit Center, costing $4.4 million, had a ribbon cutting ceremony in the morning of May 6, 2016. The station began bus service starting with weekend service on May 8 and full weekday service operations on May 9. The introduction of the new transit center also brought a complete overhaul of the bus routes. On November 14, 2022,
Greyhound Lines moved all operations into the CU Transit Center. == Fares ==