Decatur City Council approves fiber infrastructure expansion

DECATUR, Ill. (WAND) — The Decatur City Council approved an agreement with Bodine Electric to expand the City’s fiber infrastructure further into the east side of Lake Decatur, during Tuesday night's board meeting.

The City says a connection will be made to Decatur Fire Station 7 as well as Eisenhower High School, providing reliable, high-speed internet to those facilities.

A 144-strand fiber conduit was installed under Lake Decatur late last year in coordination with a Sanitary District of Decatur project.

Council’s action Tuesday will connect the school and fire station to the recently installed conduit near Lost Bridge and provide backbone for other connections to be made in the future, such as Baum, Muffley, and Montessori schools, the Decatur Airport, and others.

The contract is $530,500 and will be paid for with American Rescue Plan Act monies.

The Council also discussed the future of the Decatur Public Transit System (DPTS). During Tuesday’s meeting, results from a Comprehensive Operations Analysis (COA) were presented, which included recommendations for modernizing transit operations.

Recommendations discussed include:

Introduction of micro-transit service, or Mobility-on-Demand (MOB) was proposed to complement and supplement fixed-route service. Similar to Uber or Lyft, citizens could use a mobile device to order a ride share to an existing fixed-route or to their destination.
Expand fixed-route service hours until 8:00 p.m. and MOB service hours from 8:00 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. daily.
Higher frequency on popular routes – adding MOB and reducing the number of fixed routes would allow more buses to operate on the more popular fixed routes. Frequencies could be increased to arriving/departing every 15-20 minutes on weekdays and 20-minute frequencies on Saturday and Sunday.