It's the most subtle of City-County Council actions, the routine filing of a routine parking ordinance. But the measure also is a distinct indicator that city officials believe a bus rapid transit system will be built in Indianapolis, drastically altering the traffic landscape on the city's busiest streets.
The proposal, introduced Nov. 30, would restrict parking on Shelby Street in parts from Prospect Street to Hanna Avenue. The parking ban would make room for the Red Line’s 13-mile, $100 million first phase, from 66th Street in Broad Ripple to the University of Indianapolis at Hanna.
The move reflects the confidence leaders have that a $75 million federal “Small Starts” grant for construction of the line will be approved this spring. The city’s public transportation agency, IndyGo, applied for the grant in September.
If everything goes as planned, construction would begin in spring 2017, and the first phase of the Red Line would open in 2018. The master plan, called Indy Connect, is for the Red Line to stretch 35 miles from Westfield to Greenwood. It would be just one of five lines crisscrossing the city. The entire $10 billion plan needs to be funded and built in stages, so the timetable is uncertain.
The parking restrictions on Shelby Street most likely would begin a few months before construction starts. City-County Council member Jeff Miller said the ordinance would allow the city to adequately prepare residents for any loss of parking spaces and to ensure the process is done legally.
The city was criticized earlier this year when prime parking spots in front of businesses and homes were commandeered for construction of electric car charging stations for the BlueIndy car share service. The restrictions are a hint of the traffic overhaul that will accompany the Red Line, including the building of bus platforms, bus-only lanes, prohibitions on turns on Meridian and College avenues and elimination of street parking.Where did this $10 billion figure arise? The figure previously thrown around was $1.2 to $1.3 billion. This reporter just throws out that gigantic figure in the most cavalier of fashions as if it's just a drop in the bucket. And then people who work for this newspaper wonder why people in this city have so much distrust and discontent towards the newspaper's content.
The dedicated bus lane required for the first leg of the bus rapid transit line will wreak havoc in areas where it operates much worse than Blue Indy has already created in some of those same areas through the displacement of on-street parking. The line will run right down College Avenue instead of the more obvious and logical choice--Keystone Avenue. Clearly it's a Palladium to the Stadium vision of a party bus of sorts for occasional bus commuters heading downtown to a Colts or a Pacers game as opposed to one that would be utilized on a daily basis by serious commuters to go to and from work. Fellow blogger Fred McCarthy has some more observations on the planned traffic obstacles seemingly designed to create gridlock for those commuting by automobile here.
UPDATE: The Star updated its online story at 9:30 p.m. tonight and changed the $10 billion figure to $1 billion. The updated story contained no mention of the presumed error in the original story.
30 comments:
I was under the impression that there was to be some type of referendum regarding financing of this project.
I think it may be poor wording on the author's part. Red line estimates were at over 1 billion but to construct the entire system would be ten billion. They have no idea how long that would take considering how long it has taken to even begin construction on the red line.
Ten billion seems quite high. Denver's FasTracks is a multi rail line (including long, heavy rail lines) program and it comes in well under that amount. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FasTracks). It could be a typo. They don't proofread any more at the Star.
I support multimodal transit as a way of moving people. Simply put, it takes 30 years to build these systems and we'll need it to be competitive long before then. The Bakken shale has turned the corner, decline curve wise and people are going to freak out when they figure out where gas prices are going. We're not adequately funding road maintenance. Something has to give. Multimodal transit works if it's sold, built and implemented the right way. Unfortunately, the clowns who make these decisions locally have no clue.
While that figure would not surprise, I'm betting it was a typo. After all, it seems no one edits stories at the Indy Star anymore.
I own an apartment building on Shelby at Garfield Park and we already have parking restrictions in place on Shelby to accommodate rush hour traffic to and from downtown. If residents park on Shelby during those rush hours they are ticketed. I don't know how they're going to get transit onto that street. Shelby is not a wide street and there are businesses and libraries and Garfield Park; all in desperate need of parking. These transit buses are going to tie up traffic as they swerve around stop and go traffic on Shelby and make scheduled stops. Its going to be a mess. And I'd sure like to know whether they plan to put a bus stop in front of my property, because those things mean more litter and more people around; are they going to build bus shelters or do these people have to wait in the rain? Because if they're going to build a bus stop in front of my place I want some input. These poor bastards that had blue indy take the spots in front of their businesses without so much as a letter, that's not right. I think Hogsett ought to build a bus stop right in front of Ballard's house.
There is a very vocal group of neighbors who oppose this boondoggle for the very reasons you cite. One additional point is the simple fact that this line cannot possibly go north of 66th Street on College. North of 71st Street, College is 2 lanes, so College would have to be widened, which would take part of Park Tudor's athletic fields, part of Marott Park woods, part of the Indiana School For the Blind, and homes and properties in Meridian Hills and Williams Creek. This will never happen, so all of the claims about ridership of college students and commuters from Hamilton County are pure hogwash. An express bus from Hamilton County direct to downtown Indianapolis, with no stops, already failed for lack of interest. As you point out, if such a line were appropriate for Indianapolis, the more logical north-south route would be Keystone, which already has a median and parking restrictions. A bus rapid transit system is supposed to be used to connect riders with jobs, shopping and employment. There are no large sources of these on College, but on Keystone, there are Target, Wal-Mart, Meijer, Macy's, Glendale Town Shops, Keystone at the Crossing, Woodfield at the Crossing, two Kroger stores, two Marsh stores, an Aldi, Dollar Tree, Family Dollar and multiple other restaurants and shops. There is a 454-unit apartment complex at 66th & Keystone. At Glendale, there are an IU Health and Eskenazi outpatient clinics. If the route turned east at Fall Creek, it could be used to access activities at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. It is designed to turn onto 38th Street, then south on Meridian. Putting a median down College Avenue and restricting parking and left turns will drive out small restaurants and businesses for no good reason. There is very little ridership other than during rush hours. Running a bus every 10 minutes will not change this.
Pretty sure the 1.2-1.3b is for the first line, so 5 lines being 10b doesn't seem like a stretch. Perhaps dubious decision, but math works.
Anon. 2:34, The referendum is county-by-county to increase the local income tax to pay for the proposed mass transit improvements. It seems they've decided to push forward with it before a measure is put on the ballot by leveraging federal dollars and the election year money Pence is throwing out there for these regional initiatives to go ahead and start on it. That way when it comes up for a referendum they can argue about how it would be a waste not to follow through with it since we've already spent X dollars developing the first phase of it.
The Indygo people have told me that north of 66th street the redline buses will be using "mixed traffic" lanes with other vehicles.
That means that they will be just like a regular bus.
Doesn't that defeat the purpose that they want to spend all of this money on?
The buses will be subjected to the same traffic jams that the cars are and they won't possibly be able to run on the every 10 minute schedule.
We are being sold a bill of goods here by the city that this will be some sort of panacea to bring people to Indy.
Rather it will be a high-priced, underutilized government project that can't possibly pay for itself.
It makes far more sense to put the line up Keystone, if at all.
Steve O'Neil
Anon2:48, I also support public transit as a way to move people around as long as it it self-funded and not paid for via the threat of force. Since this plan uses the threat of force for funding, I oppose it.
10 Billion!!!?????? For buses!!!!!!! They better have gold faucet and urinals! While we are at it how about a butler to serve drinks from the bar. Maybe a mini Starbucks to serve the morning commuters. Oh did I say no poor people allowed on the express run from Fishers, Carmel, Westfield and Zionsville.
Crass transit is a public treasury as ATM- sham. These are nothing less than specious schemes to illegally / unConstitutionally leverage the public treasury.
Amusing that the Republicans think that the rest of Indiana will support being taxed for this stupidity.
Blue cars, red busses, but no black and whites - how visitor friendly.
To put it into perspective, the cost of extending I-69 from Evansville to Indianapolis is about $2 billion.
The problem with light rail is it doesn't move commerce. Buses are more economical because they move people from close to their houses to very close to their place of employment. Lets start with the people that would use it. This includes all of the inner loop (inside I465) and most of the east and west siders (the apartment dwellers) that would reap the benefits. The people in Greenwood, Carmel, Fishers, Noblesville, Zionsville and Westfield would be better served by express routes via interstate to downtown. Very few of these people are going to take a bus anywhere else in the city. Even a billion sounds absolutely insane.
Ok, Mr. Welsh's 5:31 post does put it in perspective. Which flaw firms are involved in this scam?
Lets try this again. The Carmel lawyers love light transit. Much easier for them to hop on and conduct (paralegals and legal secretaries) business downtown. They want to go to Pacer and Colts games on their little trains. But wait till something goes wrong then they will be back to their cars and SUV's. I was on the L in Chicago and saw a ten year old thug throw his drink on a yuppie, the train stopped and they (a gang of 5 kids) threw a couple of cuss words the guys way and exited the train. We were on our way to a White Sox game. Bet you a hundred bucks that people from the suburbs of Indy would go right back to their cars once they encountered a situation like this. All it would take is a robbery or a shooting and ridership would plummet off a cliff.
Guy77money: Yes, white collar or otherwise, it will be a crime conduit / corridor...
Shelby used to be a nice lightly-travelled corridor for going downtown. They're doing everything possible to ruin it completely.
Pete and Guy - the Metro subway in Baltimore is exactly what you describe - a crime conduit. One stop is Mondawmin which is where in Fred Gray riots occurred. Shoplifting in Owings Mlls, rioting and mayhem in Mondawmin, murder downtown. All courtesy of mass transit.
That has to be a typo. There's no way of bus system costs 10 billion dollars. Not even in Indianapolis with all the graft invoved.
It was apparently supposed to read $1 billion. The Star updated the story tonight and changed the number from $10 billion to $1 billion. The updated story made no reference to the earlier error.
Dem editerz 'n riderz ez shir gewd et meth
Not to worry folks, my $2 raise on my social security check will cover all things new!
Add in Brainard's tax raise, the increase in the assessed valuation of my home, sewer & water rate increase, the under estimated cost of 217 million in the next three years for more roundabouts etc., and according to the Carmel City website my share should be a little over their $22 a year estimated increase. (assume my share is $25 a year) I am already $1 in the hole before all the other new increases for medications, gasoline will be back up (road repairs), groceries are already out of sight and all the other items. AND wait for it, wait; the school referen-dumb coming soon to Car-mel will throw us all under the bus.
http://www.carmel.in.gov/index.aspx?page=25&recordid=1323&returnURL=%2findex.aspx
When you give something to someone in our society, you are taking it away from someone or something else. Our Governments, local, state and federal have just run out of other peoples money. Blood / turnip and drunken / sailor comes to mind.
I just don't get it, with Tax caps, school systems are at a bare bones operations, public safety is worried how to fund daily operations, current road infer structure is suffering, yet these dreamers want a mass transportation system, I opinion I think that train has left the station years ago, our infer structure has been set, the cost is too prohibitive for such a project.
What do they mean anyway by trans-portation?
The Red Line would snarl traffic even more on College and lead to overdevelopment of the corridor in order to drive ridership.
There are groups forming in opposition to this.
Visit collegeavenueindy.org for more information.
10B is correct. They have a matter transit plan, and its cost was revealed by the Star. The story was revised to an approximation of a very expensive bus line for the sole purpose of convincing you that driving buses on existing streets costs 1B.
There's more to come after this.
Indianapolis is missing one thing in mass transit, it is mass. Carmel, Westfield, Fishers and Noblesville high School students don't take buses to school, and the ones that do have their parents drive them to the bus stop. Now these kids when they grow up are going to ride buses to work? LOL
The politicians won't quit on this mass transit issue because if they spend our $1B or $10B they will be getting very large campaign contributions. They can't stay in office forever without the campaign money so they need to continue to feed their current and future contributors.
Just ask guys like Brainard, Dillinger, Altman, Cook and the infamous Pete Emigh.
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