Fixed-route bus outside Bloomington mulled, future unclear for Rural Transit’s urban-to-urban service
At its meeting this past Tuesday, Bloomington Transit’s five-member board gave general manager John Connell a green light to go ahead with negotiations with Monroe County government on funding for a new route that would go outside Bloomington city limits.
The new route would start at the downtown transit center, head north on Walnut Street, then west at 17th Street (which becomes Vernal Pike), turn south at Curry Pike, head west at Profile Parkway, grab Zenith Drive and then Daniels Way, before looping back east on 3rd Street, then south on South Park Square Drive, east again on Gifford Road, until hitting Curry Pike, then retracing the same path back towards the downtown transit center.
The new route would reach Ivy Tech as well as Cook Medical and Simtra BioPharma Solutions.
Board member Don Griffin said that running a route outside the city limits is significant. “It’s baby steps, but this is a really big deal,” Griffin said.
It would be the first route to go past Bloomington’s current boundaries, a possibility only since Bloomington’s city council changed local law about a year ago to enable such service.
The new route would not address the funding crisis that emerged last year for the trips that Rural Transit had historically been providing for origin and destination both inside Monroe County’s urbanized area (UA), which does not exactly coincide with Bloomington’s boundaries.
Monroe County’s UA includes lots of area outside Bloomington. Monroe County’s UA also includes most of Ellettsville.
Appearing on the Ellettsville town council agenda for Monday (Sept. 23) is an item under new business that could eventually lead to a proposal for Ellettsville to fund UA-to-UA trips, as it has done as a stop-gap measure this year. But that is far from certain.
The route outside of Bloomington discussed by BT’s board on Tuesday is based on one of the three proposals that in early August Connell sent to officials in Monroe County county government, Ellettsville Town government, and the head of Rural Transit, Chris Myers.
One of the other two route possibilities would offer service between downtown Bloomington and Ellettsville. The third possibility would combine Bloomington-to-Ellettsville service with a western loop that includes some area west of Bloomington.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Connell said the route that county commissioners were most interested in funding was the one included in the board’s meeting information packet—which heads west along 17th Street/Curry Pike making a loop to serve major employment and educational centers, and comes back into Bloomington along 17th Street/Curry Pike.
Connell also said that county commissioners were interested in an approach to funding the route, based on the length of the route inside compared to outside city limits. Here’s the breakdown of the cost, as calculated by BT:
Daily fixed route cost is 12 hours x $103/hour = $1,236
Annual fixed route cost $1,236 x 257 service days = $317,652
Credit for route miles within Bloomington (44%) = $(139,767)
Local matching funds from county = $177,885
Instead of using route miles inside versus outside of city limits, Connell said that an alternative approach offered by BT had been to reduce the cost to county government by 22-percent—to account for the amount of grant funding that BT receives through a federal grant program—the Section 5307 formula program. Bloomington Transit is awarded 5307 funds every year.
The amount of money awarded through the 5307 program is based on population—of the urbanized area, not the city of Bloomington. The idea is that the federal government wants the recipients of 5307 funding, like Bloomington Transit, to serve the transit needs of all residents in the urbanized area.
Historically Bloomington Transit has not been providing any urban-to-urban trips outside the city of Bloomington—despite the fact that BT has received some funding, based on the idea that it should provide that service. Until the city council’s passage of the August 2023 ordinance, BT could not legally provide such service.
County government officials preferred the approach that measures route mileage inside and outside the city, Connell said.
Connell also reported that the southern part of the loop had been added, at the request of county commissioners, so that bus service would be extended to Simtra BioPharma Solutions, which was formerly Baxter BioPharma Solutions.
For the other two route proposals provided by BT in early August, the cost equation had included a significant amount ($145,000 ) for the required ADA paratransit service that comes with fixed route service. That requirement is to provide ADA paratransit service to anyone living within three-quarters of a mile of a fixed route line.
Implementing the proposed route would not generate a lot more ADA paratransit trips, Connell told the board, which is already so close to the city limits that much of the three-quarter-mile buffer is already covered by BT. That’s why there’s no additional cost line for paratransit service in connection with the new route.
The proposed new route is almost entirely contained within territory that would be annexed into Bloomington, if the pending litigation over annexation were to be resolved in favor of Bloomington.
Board chair James McLary said that the proposed route west of Bloomington is important. But even more important, McLary said, is the route between Ellettsville and Bloomington. He noted that he’s not the one paying for the service.
McLary was keen to track ridership for any new route, saying that he does not want to start such a new route and not have it succeed.
At Tuesday’s meeting, ridership numbers for existing BT fixed route service were reported by Shelley Strimaitis, who is BT’s planning and special projects manager.
For the first time in the post-pandemic era, ridership in any month was clearly down on a year-over-year comparison. Compared to the 230,653 rides in August of 2023, this year’s 176,857 rides amounted to 23 percent less ridership.
Strimaitis said the drop was due to the difference in the start date for Indiana University’s fall semester. In August 2023, there were 10 full days of classes, compared to just five days this year, Strimaitis said.
