First Bus Departs From Revamped Franklin Street Station In Reading

Map of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States with township and municipal boundaries (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The final step toward Reading’s iconic Franklin Street Station once again serving passengers came in the form of a message.

BARTA officials arranged for the message to flash on the first bus to leave the station since its rebirth: “Thanks Dennis; You gave it all.”

It was for Dennis D. Louwerse, BARTA’s executive director, who died Thursday after 30 years leading the county transit agency.

“This is the culmination of a dream,” Ryan Furgerson, BARTA’s deputy executive director, said of the first bus departing from the former train station.  “This is something Dennis would very much wanted to have seen.”

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Death Leaves BARTA With Big Hole To Fill

English: BARTA bus in downtown Reading, Pennsylvania, July 2007. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

BARTA will send off the first bus from its restored Franklin Street Station in Monday, taking the final step in realizing its dream of reopening the once-abandoned city transportation hub.

But agency officials who have been scrambling to start the new Reading-Lebanon route will have something else on their minds: the man whose vision for the station started it all.

Dennis D. Louwerse, BARTA’s longtime executive director, died Thursday night from complications related to a respiratory infection, according to agency officials.  He was 68.

He took the helm of the then-financially troubled bus agency 30 years ago and transformed it into an organization that’s recognized in the national transportation industry.

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Historic Reading Train Station A Hub Again

Louise Frasso has fond memories of the childhood day trips she would take from Reading by train.

“My grandmother had a pass on the railroad and she would take my siblings and I to Philadelphia,” said the now-86-year-old Muhlenberg Township woman.

All those trips started and ended with the Franklin Street Station in downtown Reading.

The rail and bus hub, which was built in 1930, was still in its infancy when Frasso would travel with her family. It served Berks County for decades before the last train left in 1981 and the station fell into disrepair.

Friday, at a ceremony rededicating the station, Frasso sat grinning ear to ear as she listened to local officials discuss the work that went into restoring it.  The station will be a hub for BARTA bus service.

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