Bloomington Transit (BT) is looking to build a new $43.75-million administrative, operations and maintenance complex, to replace the one currently at Grimes Lane.
On Tuesday night, the BT board approved a resolution that is supposed to help pay for that new complex. The resolution authorizes BT general manager John Connell to apply for $35 million in federal funding for the 2025 fiscal year.
The amount requested from the feds is 80-percent of the 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.
The specific source of funds, which are available for this type of project through the FTA (Federal Transit Authority), is Section 5339(b) of Title 49 of the United States Code.
According to BT grants and procurement specialist Zac Huneck, the total estimated cost for the new facility is $54.4 million, which includes $10 million for land acquisition, and $600,000 for architectural and engineering work.
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. The new east-west express route has been branded by BT as the Green Line.
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 feds.
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.
The 2024 budget for Bloomington Transit includes $12.5 million for land acquisition to build a new facility. The idea had been to use about $2.5 million of local money to match a hoped-for federal grant that would cover the cost of the roughly $12.5-million land acquisition.
In an email to The B Square, responding to a question about the land acquisition costs and how that fits into the $35-million request, Huneck wrote: “We determined that we can move forward with land acquisition utilizing existing federal funds from previous years, alongside some local funds.”
About the logic behind that choice, Huneck wrote, “We’ve pivoted and believe seizing the opportunity to apply for a larger amount of funding is more strategic, given over $1B in funding is available.”
Pursuing the $35 million in grant funding this year could mean shortening the overall timeline for the project, Huneck, indicated. He put it like this: “If successful, we will be able to accelerate facility construction by one year so we may start realizing the full scope of our ongoing projects—transition to zero-emission fleet, the Green Line, boosting frequencies, and potential service beyond city boundaries.”
About BT’s chances for winning the grant, Huneck wrote: “We believe we have a good shot this year. And should we not be awarded the grant this year, we’ll be in an excellent position to be successful in 2025 using whatever post-application feedback from FTA we would receive, with no downside to our original plans.”
In early March, when general manager John Connell briefed the city council on BT’s plans, he asked for some kind of letter from the council in support of its Section 5339(b) grant application.
On Wednesday, city council staff administrator/attorney Stephen Lucas responded to an emailed B Square question by indicating he does not believe there will be an item about BT’s federal grant application on next week’s (March 27) meeting agenda.
But Lucas wrote that he is working with Connell and council president Isabel Piedmont-Smith to nail down a meeting date sometime in April for the council to vote on an item in support of the federal grant application.
Based on February ridership numbers for 2024, BT’s fixed route service continues to claw back ridership after the sharp downturn during the COVID-19 pandemic. The 289,453 rides in February 2024 are 20 percent more than February 2023. But the February numbers this year are still just 87 percent of the 330,889 rides given in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic hit.
