Bloomington Transit puts off nixing northern loop on Route #1, OKs $32.6 million budget for 2025

At its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, Bloomington Transit’s board approved the agency’s budget for 2025, which weighs in at $32.6 million.

The budget was not controversial for board members, because they’d received a briefing on a draft last month, and the version in front of them on Tuesday saw only minor revisions.

What took more time than it typically does were the board deliberations on a change to one fixed bus route.

In this case, the proposal to chop the northern loop off of Route #1, in order to achieve better on-time performance, was put off by the board, pending further study and consideration of other alternatives by BT staff

Bloomington Transit 2025 Budget

Under BT’s collective bargaining agreement with its drivers, compensation will see a 6-percent increase in 2025. Non-union BT staff will see an average increase of 5 percent more, based on remarks from BT controller Christa Browning at Tuesday’s meeting.

Board member budget questions focused on the sustainability of BT’s spending, and the status of land acquisition for a new operations center to replace the Grimes Lane facility. There’s about $12.5 million in the 2025 budget for land acquisition.

Browning said that by 2026, BT would likely need to think about additional funding streams to continue on its current path. As for the land acquisition question, BT general manager John Connell said that the number of potential locations for a new facility had been narrowed to two.

One minor revision to the budget was on the revenue side. On Tuesday, the board approved the new agreement with Indiana University for the arrangement under which IU affiliates board buses without paying a fare. That meant the revenue number coming from the IU agreement could be dialed in at $1,245,590.

Even though BT’s board approved the budget with its Tuesday action, BT’s budget is still subject to approval by Bloomington’s city council, which is expected sometime in the first half of October.

The city council is expected to get a first look at BT’s budget next Wednesday (Aug. 28) which is included in four days worth of department budget hearings that same week.

From the BT board’s meeting information packet:

2025 Budget Goals

• Acquire land for the site of a new BPTC Administration, Operations, and Maintenance
  Complex.
• Secure Federal Funding for design and construction of a new Administration, Operations, and Maintenance Complex.
• Procure two new articulated buses to satisfy passenger capacity issues and reduce operating expenses.
• Implement year two of the passenger stop and shelter improvement plan.
• Expand BLink, micro-transit services to provide access to transit service to a larger
  population of residents.

Fixed-route service changes: Route #1

On Tuesday, two proposed fixed-route bus changes were presented to the board by Shelley Strimaitis, BT’s planning and special projects manager.

The proposed change for Route 3 was to eliminate a morning-evening difference—so that the outbound and inbound path that is currently used mid-day, will be used for all trips during the week. According to Strimaitis, its purpose was to conform to the best practice of maintaining the same route alignment throughout the day. That route change was approved by the board.

But a second proposed fixed-route bus change was postponed for further consideration. The proposal was to lop off the northern loop of Route #1, which follows Rosewood Drive, Acuff Road, and Prow Road around Bloomington Meadows Hospital.

The purpose of the modification is to improve on-time performance for the route. Strimaitis told the board the route is on time less than 40 percent of the time, and for some runs it’s on time less than 20 percent of the time. It’s an issue that comes up mainly when IU classes are in session, Strimaitis said.

Strimaitis told the board that there are passengers who get picked up and dropped off at the stops along the Route #1 northern loop. The proposal was to serve those passengers with a different alternative—its new BLink on-demand microtransit service.

Strimaitis told the board that each stop on the loop has an average of three to four people a day who use it, which made her think it could be low enough usage that it could be incorporated into the BLink microtransit program. The fixed-route fare is $1 per ride. The BLink fare is $2.

But Strimaitis told the board that there was pushback at the Aug. 19 public hearing about the change, and she’d received written commentary about the proposed change after the announcement was made on July 19.

Strimaitis told the board that the feedback made her take a step back, saying, “It’s easy to look at the numbers on the page and see that it’s not affecting that many people.” She continued, “But from what I’ve heard—Bloomington Meadows Hospital is up there, there’s a neighborhood up there—those three or four people a day are public transit reliant.”

Strimaitis told the board that the financial burden of going from the $1 bus fare to the $2 BLink could be too much for.those three or four people a day who are reliant on public transit. Strimitis said she did not hear any public comments in support of the route change. She received about six or seven comments during the comment period and during the public hearing against the change.

Attending Tuesday’s meeting was Charlie Brooks, who is CEO of Bloomington Meadows Hospital. He confirmed the use of the stops on the northern loop by patients, as well as family members and friends of patients.

Board members generally seemed uncomfortable with the idea that BLink was an adequate replacement service. Board member Don Griffin put it like this: “Of all the things that we’re looking at, that may be…one of the groups of folks that we don’t want to mess with.”

It was BT board member Doug Horn who made the motion to put off a decision on the change to Route #1 until the September meeting, and to request that staff come up with an alternative that does not eliminate the loop.

During Tuesday’s meeting, and after it finished, a couple of BT drivers at the meeting floated suggestions to Strimaitis for other alternatives that would improve on-time performance.