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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowAndrew Luck isn’t coming back—and neither are four travel lanes on College Avenue.
As IndyGo prepares to launch the Red Line, the city’s first bus rapid transit route, one thing is certain: The time to debate whether the Red Line should have been built is over. The $96.3 million investment in the route and other system-wide upgrades is made, the stations are ready for passengers beginning Sept. 1, and the city’s transportation culture is poised for what we hope is the beginning of a significant shift.
Some residents and businesses along the 13.1-mile Broad Ripple-to-University of Indianapolis route and drivers who frequent its most-affected streets—College and Capitol avenues and Meridian and Shelby streets—continue to grumble about the route selected for the Red Line—or its very existence. If its performance doesn’t measure up, they can have their “I told you so” moment, but at this point, everyone should be rooting for the Red Line to succeed.
The most irrefutable reason is that it’s a done deal. Why would anyone want our investment to go to waste? But there’s also this: The city has limped along for decades with a “transportation of last resort” bus system. The Red Line (and its proposed companion routes, the Purple Line on the northeast side and the east-west Blue Line along Washington Street), along with more frequent service on all routes, is our best shot at giving commuters in car-centric Indianapolis a legitimate choice of how to travel.
For some, using transit is simply a lifestyle preference. For others, like people without cars and the businesses that would employ them, the stakes are higher. A better transit system is a path to work and a more employable workforce.
It’s not as if taxpayers are being saddled with a carelessly considered, luxury system. Getting to this point required decades of study and public debate. And the finished product is admired—at least from afar—as a responsible investment with a big upside.
“Indy’s system is a model for how lower-density cities with auto-centric cultures can start making major improvements in their transit offerings in a capital-efficient way,” said Aaron Renn, an analyst with the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
After examining IndyGo’s strategy, transportation guru Yonah Freemark said in his Streetsblog USA that the city’s transit plans offer the potential for big benefits at a low cost.
The true test of the Red Line will be in the execution. The Red Line and its companion lines will be judged on how they operate. It’s up to IndyGo to offer a level of service that lives up to the careful planning that got us here.
As IndyGo officials monitor the results, they should consider the experience of similar cities, such as Columbus, Ohio, where the percentage of downtown workers commuting by bus surged from 5% in June 2018 to more than 10% after downtown property owners saw the advantage of making bus passes free for downtown workers.
Maybe such strategies will be needed one day to change commuting habits here. For now, we’re eager to get beyond ridership projections and see what IndyGo’s new system can do.•
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That editorial is the usual response of those who are unable to argue the facts: try to shut off debate.
We are indeed being “saddled with a carelessly considered, luxury system.” When not a single publication explained how much the added transportation would cost per passenger mile, when IndyGo repeatedly refused to divulge that information, when its CEO took to the papers with grossly misleading factoids, and when IndyGo relied on studies containing flagrant falsehoods, the system was carelessly considered.
The press and the City-County Council failed to investigate or consider the city at large.
A mere 5% of the Purple Line’s capital cost would buy twice as many rides by cab as the Purple Line will add to its corridor by bus—and that’s before any ongoing operating expenses. This is but one of the many financial obscenities that IndyGo’s campaign of deception has visited upon the citizens of Indianapolis. And the press played along–as did the City-County Council.
Before imposing a transit tax, a conscientious city council would have considered, say, a Franklin Township produce manager whose son is struggling in Algebra II. The $80 in transit tax he pays could have provided his boy a couple of tutoring sessions. Instead that $80 will add as few as two bus rides.
A conscientious city council would not have ignored the fact that a Washington Township dog walker could have filled her daughter’s lunch box for a month on the $60 she pays in transit tax. But by all appearances the council we have would rather spare FedEx the need to pay wages high enough to justify an unsubsidized commute.
Why else would no one hold IndyGo’s feet to the fire when it stiff-armed a ridership-projection request at the May Municipal Corporations Committee meeting? Why else would Councilor Adamson thereupon—with a straight face—commend IndyGo for its willingness to answer tough questions?
No, the time for debate is not over; because of the press, no meaningful debate ever got started.