Bloomington Transit board OKs steps towards land for new operations facility, fixed route rides continue to slip
Bloomington Transit is around six weeks away from reaching an agreement with the owner of a property where it plans to build a new operations facility, to replace the one at Grimes Lane.
That's the takeaway from the regular monthly meeting of BT's five-member board of directors on Tuesday evening. BT is staying mum on which specific property is being considered, until a deal is in place. For now, all the written materials describe the land as "the subject property."
Another takeaway from Tuesday's board meeting is the slipping ridership figures on fixed route buses for the first three months of the year, compared to the same three months last year.
Land acquisition for new operations center
On Tuesday, the board approved two resolutions that keep some momentum towards getting a land deal done for a new facility in the next few months. One resolution gives Bloomington Transit's general manager John Connell the authority to sign a right of first refusal agreement with the land owner—for $20,000, to be paid at $3,334 per month for up to six months. The second resolution approves up to $100,000 for a preliminary Phase 2 environmental site assessment.
As BT board member Doug Horn put it, a right of first refusal does not "lock down the property for six months," but rather ensures that if another prospective buyer were to come forward to purchase the property, BT would have certain rights about the ability to negotiate and bid against the other potential buyer.
The environmental study is meant to ensure that there are not as yet unknown issues with contamination, and the like, that could require expensive mediation. Connell told The B Square after Tuesday's meeting that the environmental work, which entails taking borings and analyzing them, is expected to take around six weeks. If everything checks out, that means a general time frame for a deal and the revelation of the property location could come in early June.
The new facility for bus storage, maintenance, and administration would replace the one currently co-located on Grimes Lane with Indiana University's campus bus facility. The Grimes Lane land is owned by the university, but the building is owned by Bloomington Transit. Not affected or involved in the new operations facility is BT's downtown bus station, at 3rd and Walnut streets.
If everything goes perfectly according to plan, ground could be broken on the new facility some time in the second quarter of 2026.
Expansion of the current operations center footprint to the surrounding real estate is not feasible, because most of the current facility sits in a floodplain, and some of it is in the floodway.
While the exact location of the new facility is not known, it's still expected to be close to the city of Bloomington, even if it's not inside city limits. BT 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 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 fleet that BT will need, in order to operate expanded service, including a planned new east-west express route. That east-west express route has been branded as the Green Line.
As of last year, the total estimated cost for BT's new facility was $54.4 million, which included $10 million for land acquisition, and $600,000 for architectural and engineering work. BT was hoping to get $35 million from the FTA (Federal Transit Authority), through Section 5339(b) of Title 49 of the United States Code. But that application did not come through.
To help fund the project, BT is now looking at about $13.6 million of Section 5307 funding that it has been awarded but is still uncommitted. In February, Connell told the BT board that his "greatest concern at this point is that uncommitted funding could evaporate." BT is also looking at the almost $4 million annually it receives from the city of Bloomington through the economic development local income tax (ED LIT) to help pay for the new operations facility.
Fixed route ridership
For the third month in a row this year, ridership figures on Bloomington Transit fixed route buses were lower than the same month in 2024. Overall that means about an 11% drop, from 772,075 to 683,685 rides. That's despite offering 7% more service hours—7,997 this year, compared to 7,463 last year.
At Tuesday's meeting board members speculated that some of the drop could be explained by the winter storms that hit this year, or the later start to the Indiana University winter term. IU affiliates typically make up about 70% of BT fixed route ridership.
Shelley Strimaitis, who is BT's planning and special projects manager, also reported that ridership on the new Route 13, which serves the Park 48 area outside of Bloomington's city limits, is not yet hitting hoped-for ridership numbers, but is trending in the right direction. The numbers for the first three months of the year are: 664 (January); 1,050 (February); and 1,172 (March).
