An application by Bloomington Transit for $35 million from the FTA (Federal Transit Administration) for the construction of a new administrative, operations and maintenance complex now has a resolution of support from the city council.
At its regular Wednesday meeting, the council voted 8–0 to support the resolution. Andy Ruff did not attend.
The reason for building a new operations complex is that BT’s current bus facility, at Grimes Lane, is not big enough to accommodate the expanded battery-electric fleet that BT will need, in order to operate expanded service, including a planned new east-west express route. The planned new route has been branded by BT as the Green Line.
The construction cost for the facility is $43.75-million. The amount requested from the FTA is 80-percent of the construction cost, which is typical for federal transit funding. A 20-percent local match is expected. That means BT will have a balance of $8.75 million to match with local money.
There’s also a total of $10 million in land acquisition costs that BT will need to cover, through a combination of federal and local funds.
The funding for construction of BT’s planned facility is made possible through Section 5339(b) of Title 49 of the United States Code.
A month ago, in early March, general manager John Connell briefed the city council on Bloomington Transit’s plans. At that meeting, Connell asked for some kind of expression of support from the council to include with its Section 5339(b) grant application.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Connell joined the meeting on the Zoom video conference platform. The in-person presentation of the resolution was given by BT grants and procurement specialist Zac Huneck.
Connell told the council that BT’s application would be improved by the resolution of support from the council. “One of the things that really strengthens our chances is to demonstrate united local support for this project,” Connell said.
In his presentation to the council, Huneck described how BT is spending the nearly $4 million a year that the public bus agency is receiving from Bloomington as a part of the city’s share of a new local income tax (LIT) enacted by the city council in May 2022.
BT is providing additional Sunday service, and is studying the idea of a high-frequency east-west corridor along 3rd Street, Huneck said. Eight additional battery electric buses have been purchased, which puts BT on the way to a zero-emission fleet, Huneck told the council.
In 2022, BT’s adopted the following goals: (1) purchase only lower-emission and electric buses in the bus procurements; (2) transition to 60-percent battery electric bus fleet by 2030; and (3) transition to 100-percent battery electric bus fleet by 2050.
On Wednesday, Huneck described the current facility at Grimes Line as a “bottleneck” on the bus agency’s future plans.
It looks unlikely that the new BT operations center will be built on an expanded footprint at the current Grimes Lane facility. One 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.
The floodway is basically a deal-breaker, because the new facility is envisioned to include not just more raw square footage, but indoor storage. The indoor storage is needed to protect the battery-electric fleet to which BT is gradually transitioning. Building indoor storage in a floodway would almost certainly never win the required approvals from the U.S. government.
BT has directed its real estate consultant, Hanson Professional Services, Inc., to expand its search for a new location to include any property within Monroe County’s urbanized area.
The real estate where the Grimes Lane facility sits is owned by Indiana University. Bloomington Transit and IU Campus Bus services are co-located there. So one of the strategies included in BT’s strategic plan, adopted early this year, is to expand opportunities for collaboration and integration with IU Campus Bus, beyond mere co-location.
Responding to a councilmember question on Wednesday, Huneck said the application deadline for the Section 5339(b) funding is April 25.
According to the timeline included in BT’s memo to the city council, the site selection is supposed to be done by the end of September 2024. In the first half of 2025 the land acquisition is supposed to be finalized and the preliminary design completed. The final facility design and construction documents will be done by the end of 2025. The construction is expected to take two years, starting in 2026. The new facility is expected to be operational in the first half of 2028.
Would IU Campus Bus also move to the site that the City of Bloomington eventually creates?