Bloomington Transit board briefed on $32.6M budget for 2025, new east-west line, microtransit
At its Tuesday meeting, Bloomington Transit’s five-member board of directors received a presentation on the proposed 2025 budget, a preliminary report about a possible new east-west high-frequency bus line for Bloomington, and an update on the launch of its new BLink microtransit service.
At $32.6 million, Bloomington Transit’s draft 2025 budget is about $6 million bigger than the adopted 2024 spending plan.
The 2025 budget will include about $12.5 million for land acquisition, to build a new operations facility. That’s the same land acquisition project that is in the 2024 budget, that money has not yet been spent, and likely won’t be by the end of the year.
But a $35-million federal grant that BT had hoped to get, to support the construction of the new facility on the new land, won’t appear in the 2025 budget. That grant was not awarded to BT.
The increase of roughly $6 million between the 2024 and 2025 budgets is for vehicles—fixed-route buses, relief vehicles, and paratransit vans.
Ridership on fixed-route buses for May and June was down compared to the first four months of the year. But that’s the routine rhythm of bus ridership in Bloomington, which follows the cycle of Indiana University’s calendar.
Compared to May and June in 2023, ridership this year is basically the same, which is a departure from the year-over-year monthly increases that BT was seeing during the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
2025 Budget
At their Tuesday meeting, BT board members got a presentation of the proposed 2025 budget, but will not vote on it until their August 20 meeting. Later in August, the BT budget will get a look from Bloomington’s city council, before the council adopts BT’s annual spending plan along with the other components of the city’s budget in late September or early October.
The total 2025 budget comes in at $32.6 million compared to $26.6 million in 2024.
To balance its proposed 2025 budget, BT plans to use $3.26 million from reserves, which will leave a reserve balance of about $13 million.
Likely getting the most scrutiny from city councilmembers will be BT’s expenditures that rely on the $3.8 million in local income tax (LIT) that the city of Bloomington has allocated to BT for five years, after the LIT increase in the economic development category was enacted in May 2022.
The biggest single expense out of that LIT funding is the $2.49 million local match for federal Section 5307 grant funds, which will contribute to a total project cost of $12.47 million for land acquisition. The purpose of the land acquisition will be to build a new operations facility to replace the current one at Grimes Lane. The money for the land acquisition will not be spent in 2024 as anticipated, so this reflects a re-appropriation of the funds for 2024. It has turned out to be a challenge to find suitable land to buy.
BT general manager John Connell also reported to the board on Tuesday that BT was not awarded a $35-million grant, which BT had applied for under Section 5339(b) of Title 49 to help fund construction of the new operations facility. Most of the $1.5 billion worth of grants that was awarded to other agencies across the country was put towards paying for new buses, to reduce emissions.
Also drawing on the city of Bloomington’s LIT in the 2025 BT budget is $400,000 that is allocated for hybrid microtransit and same-day paratransit service. Another $300,000 from the LIT revenues is set aside for Sunday service.
Also drawing on the city’s LIT revenue in the 2025 BT budget is another $200,000 for staff positions in marketing, development, grants, and procurement, and a $75,000 fare subsidy program.
Other budget highlights include the fact that employee compensation will see a 6-percent increase, under the collective bargaining agreement.
Diesel fuel prices are budgeted at $3.50 per gallon. Outside legal services are budgeted at $80,000 which will cover about 200 hours.
On the revenue side, BT’s property tax revenues are budgeted to increase by 4 percent, to $1.67 million.
BT’s regular certified share of LIT (local income tax) is budgeted at $626,676, subject to a final determination from the (DLGF) Department of Local Government Finance.
Revenue from passenger fares is budgeted at a decrease of 6.6 percent, from $375,000 down to $350,000. But fares from partnership agreements—which includes student-oriented housing developments like Verve, Muller Park, and Atlas—are projected to increase by 44 percent, from $519,164 up to $749,414.
Broken out separately in the BT budget is the agreement with Indiana University, under which university affiliates can board BT buses by showing their school ID. That number is budgeted at $1,197,653 in the 2025 budget , which is the same number as for 2024—but negotiations with IU are continuing.
Advertising revenues are projected to increase to $175,000 from $155,000 in the 2024 approved BT budget.
When a federal Section 5307 grant for land acquisition is added to other 5307 money, the total comes to $14.6 million in 5307 grants in the 2025 BT budget.
Another $2.6 million in funding for BT’s 2025 budget comes from the state of Indiana’s Public Mass Transportation Fund (PMTF).
Green Line: East-West corridor bus rapid transit
At their Tuesday meeting, BT Board members got a presentation from Reinaldo Germano, who is a senior transportation planner with FourSquare ITP, on the first phase of a study that his firm is conducting about the feasibility of an east-west high-frequency bus line for Bloomington. The planned new route has been branded as the Green Line.
The $450,000 contract with FourSquare to conduct the study was approved by the board at its September 2023 meeting.
One takeaway from the presentation was the big price tag for the capital costs of lane improvements and other infrastructure work, which on the high end could amount to $165 million.
At Tuesday’s board meeting, BT general manager John Connell put the presentation in the context of the study’s phases. Only Phase 1 has been completed. Phase 2 is supposed to take from now until the end of 2024.
Connell put it like this: “Once Phase 2 is done, then we’ll be faced with the tough decision of: What do we do?” Connell asked, “Is this something that the community wants to rally behind? And if the answer is yes, then how are we going to fund it?” In other communities, Connell said, dedicated sources of funding for such bus rapid transit (BRT) lines had been found.
A dedicated source of funding for the BRT could also support enhancements to other parts of the existing fixed-route bus system, and the expansion of microtransit, Connell said.
BLink Micro-transit
Monday marked the first day when Bloomington Transit’s new BLink micro-transit service was available.
The program is branded as BLink—which is pronounced “blink” not “bee-link.” The pronunciation squares up with the marketing slogan: BLink and you’ll be there!
Using the BLink app, or by making a phone call, from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, passengers will be able to ask for a ride between any of three zones inside the city of Bloomington—North, East, and Downtown. Passengers will also be able to book zone-to-zone rides up to 24 hours in advance. The fare for the new service is $2. The regular fixed route fare is $1.
Fares can be paid by cash or with the TokenTransit app.
Shelley Strimaitis, who is BT’s planning and special projects manager, gave an update on the new service—but no rides had been taken for the first two days of the BLink service.
That’s likely due in part, to the fact that BT has not aggressively marketed the service, yet, beyond a post to BT’s Facebook page. Strimaitis said that a direct mailing would be sent out, once the flyers have been printed.
Based on BT general manager John Connell’s remarks, the lack of an aggressive marketing campaign for the initial launch was likely intentional. Connell said that the last thing BT had wanted was to launch, and then be overwhelmed—to over-promise and under-deliver. Connell said that BT realized there would likely be “some hiccups.”
The same scheduling platform that runs BT’s BLink service, made by RideCo, is now also supporting BT Access, which is Bloomington Transit’s paratransit service.
One of the hiccups that was discovered on launch of the RidCo platform for BT Access was some inaccurate GIS information that was inherited from BT’s old system, Strimaitis said. Strimaitis said that BT’s dispatchers who were working in the old system “were working miracles, in my opinion, with how much they were able to manipulate manually and fix things.”
