As soon as fall of this year (2024), Bloomington Transit (BT) hopes to offer a fixed-route bus that offers service to the area outside of the current city limits on the western edge of town.
That is one one big takeaway from BT general manager John Connell’s report to Bloomington’s city council on Wednesday.
The area that the route would serve includes big employers west of the current city boundaries like Cook Medical, Simtra BioPharma (Baxter), and Ivy Tech Community College.
Until last year, when the city council enacted an ordinance allowing it, BT could not operate anywhere outside the city boundaries.
Connell told city councilmembers that one of the challenges will be to identify a funding source for the new route.
The ordinance enacted by the city council has wording that is intended to protect Bloomington residents from paying more than their fair share.
It says that bus service outside the city limits has to be paid for with sources other than “city funds or tax revenues already paid by city residents to the Bloomington Public Transportation Corporation.” Bloomington taxpayers support BT through a dedicated public transportation property tax and a portion of the city of Bloomington’s local income tax revenue.
Last year’s ordinance also says that any interlocal agreements have to be “equitable” when it comes to what Bloomington residents already pay.
After his presentation to the council, Connell told The B Square that BT will be looking to partner on funding with large employers, including Ivy Tech, as well as Monroe County government. But Connell noted that there are myriad details that would need to be worked out. As one example, if Cook Medical helped pay the cost, the bus schedule would need to accommodate the timing of the shift changes at Cook, Connell said
At a transit summit held in late January, Connell said he had hoped to establish a path forward for a dedicated local funding source for transit outside the city limits.
But on Wednesday, Connell told The B Square that BT is not going to wait until that dedicated funding source is in place, to start working to meet the transportation needs west of the city.
To put the dedicated local funding source in place, would take several steps, Connell said, including legislation passed at the state level.
About the idea of providing service now, instead of waiting for the long-term funding service, Connell said: “It’s on the top of our priority list.”
On a different topic, looking ahead to planning for the 2025 budget year, Connell also made a request of the city council—a letter of support to include in BT’s application to the Federal Transit Administration, to help fund the design and construction of a new expanded bus storage facility. The cost given on Wednesday for that project was $35 million.
BT’s current bus facility at Grimes Lane is not big enough to accommodate the expanded fleet that BT will need to operate expanded service, including a planned new east-west express route. Another factor weighing against the Grimes Lane location is that it sits at least partly in a floodway. The same is true for neighboring real estate.
In addition to raw square footage, what is needed is indoor storage, to protect the battery-electric fleet to which BT is bit by bit transitioning.
The 2024 budget for Bloomington Transit includes $12.5 million for land acquisition to build a new facility. The idea is to use about $2.5 million of local money to match a hoped-for federal grant that will cover the cost of the roughly $12.5-million land acquisition.
The dedicated lanes for Bloomington Transit’s planned east-west express route had faced a possible legislative roadblock a few weeks ago. But SB 52, which would have prohibited dedicating lanes for public transit use, is now dead, after Republicans negotiated a deal with IndyGo, which is the public transit agency for Indianapolis.
The planned east-west express route for Bloomington has been branded by BT as the Green Line.
BT has created a website to provide information about its future projects, including the Green Line: TransformBT.com
Seems like a lot of “cart before the horse“ thinking and actions going on here. Is that appropriate for a transit system?
What is the rationale for this new route running to/from the downtown terminal? Strikes me that this is going to be an extremely slow travel option.
Has BT presented other alternatives?
What data has been shared regarding where the employees of these businesses live?
That graphic is not meant to suggest that the new route to the area just west of the city limits would follow the same alignment as the route shown. It is meant only to illustrate that that five years ago (2019), the idea of providing service to that area just west of the city limits was analyzed as something worth recommending by BT’s consultant as a part of the route optimization plan. That is to say, it’s not an idea that BT only recently came with.
Good to know. Thanks for the clarification
Hopefully they will be able to make one of the lanes of 3rd Street bus-only to make it faster.
I haven’t been following this closely. I used to ride the 3 route to Otis Elevator, though. What is the route 3 graphic from 2019 intended to illustrate in this context? Following the links I can see it’s not the Green Line…
It is meant to illustrate that five years ago (2019), the idea of providing service to that area just west of the city limits was analyzed as something worth recommending by BT’s consultant as a part of the route optimization plan. I don’t imagine that the alignment of whatever new route is implemented will follow that route’s exact alignment.
Got it. Thanks, Dave.