Comments (previously sent to Freeman) I sent just before they bailed on the bill.
Representative Speedy:
I see that you, Rep. Julie McGuire and Rep. Bob Behning sponsored SB52 in the house. My initial elation that this bill came out of the House committee was dampened greatly by the prohibition on dedicated lanes being watered down to a basically one-year prohibition. As I indicated below when I sent the following e-mails to the Senate sponsors of the bill, I fully support the prohibition of dedicated lanes, which I hope would prevent INDYGO from implementing this boondoggle. I would request that the house change the bill back to at least a ten-year prohibition (a return to a permanent prohibition would be fantastic!). In that time frame, the disaster that is the Red Line (and the developing Purple Line) will be evident to all except the few who choose to ignore the reality, as the infrastructure issues and financial issues related to this scheme (including the use of heavy, expensive electric buses) becomes a full-scale crisis. Please share this e-mail with your co-sponsors (whose e-mails I did not find) and any other House representatives you wish. Thank you.
Part One:
As a bus rider, bike rider and former city planner (34 years of experience), I fully support your bill to prohibit dedicated bus lanes for the Blue Line. Planners who learn how to destroy cities and control people's lives in planning schools (I have a B.S. in Accounting and a M.A. in Geography and was a certified planner (AICP) for well over a decade) have been trying to micromanage where people live for decades and they believe that one of the ways to do this is to make driving so burdensome that people will ride their glorious transit lines (plus they like to brag to other planners in other cities that they have cool things too!). They use the excuse that they can get Federal money to fix other infrastructure along these transit corridors while at the same time expanding infrastructure that they will not be able to maintain. Make it make sense? In 10-15 years, when these transit stations are falling apart, they will be begging for funds to maintain all of this new infrastructure that is not needed. Should Indygo make some improvements to these transit corridors? Sure. But that improvement should consist of shelters where needed and bus pads and sidewalks (working with DPW) where substandard sidewalks exist. They do not need a dedicated bus lane. The Red Line is a joke (I've ridden it). It adds no real value. It is just a different bus (drivers barely give you enough time to get on and off the bus because they are trying to meet a faster schedule) that is more expensive, which suffers from more fareless riders and the same empty buses (almost every time I bike along that corridor I will see two buses back-to-back - which is a sign of too many buses and too few riders).
Removing lanes on Washington Street will be a disaster. They will want to argue that transit creates density and that density will improve the economic vitality of the corridor and use other cities as evidence - regardless of whether those cities are even remotely comparable. When they get desperate, they will trot out Washington D.C, Charlotte NC and even San Francisco and New York City as examples of transit successes as if Indianapolis is even remotely comparable (plus they are not successful by normal measurements - but are only successful by planning measures). San Francisco's land area is equivalent to Center Township and while the BART system connects to neighboring Oakland, by comparison no one rides it in Oakland and San Francisco ridership is boosted by tourism. Transit systems with reasonable ridership are in dense places. San Francisco is four times as dense as Center Township and nearly five times as dense as Indianapolis. In order for Indy to be of similar density (14, 298 people / sq. mile), Indianapolis would have to have nearly 5,200,000 people (The 2020 census had San Fran with 870,000 people but population projections indicate that have lost 200,000! people since 2020 - the 5.2 million figure is based on those projections). https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/san-francisco-ca-population How come the magic of transit has not prevented this decline? Other things are more important - like crime and housing costs. Even Detroit MI, whose population has declined by a million people in the last 90+ years is still 1.5 times more dense than Indianapolis! https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/detroit-mi-population. And no one is claiming that Detroit is a mecca of transit. Indianapolis has also lost population since the 2020 census according to projections despite any claims to the contrary. https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/indianapolis-in-population
The people that support these transit boondoggles benefit in some way (the riders benefit the least). The Washington Street bus has the most ridership, has sufficient bus frequency (buses arrive approx. every 15 minutes) and only needs supportive infrastructure for the riders; it doesn't need expensive transit stations or dedicated lanes that inhibit car and truck traffic and would require additional funding for maintenance which the government will steal from the public. Please believe that are more people out here who agree with you and not the Irvington residents (seemingly half or which are government employees) who will act like you are committing murder by trying to bring common sense to bear.
The truth is that none of these people ever ride them themselves. When they travel to other cities for Planning Conferences in places like San Francisco or Atlanta, do they take their light rail from the airport? No they don't, because it is too inconvenient. But they want everyone else to do what they won't do themselves.
So, please don't give up on this bill. We will all breathe easier when it passes. Every sensible person on the eastside is dreading the possibility of this permanent monument to stupidity being constructed on the eastside forever transforming this corridor - and not for the better.
Part Two:
Don't let the businesses cowering from the pressure of the Irvington residents prevent you from pressing forward with this bill. There is no justification for dedicated lanes anywhere in this city. When I lived in Pittsburgh, they had dedicated bus lanes downtown (Pittsburgh's downtown was very compact. They also had separate busways (using abandoned railroad tunnels for the southside busway). I rode the bus there and they kind of made sense for the bus riders, but they were terrible for the car drivers (driving in Pittsburgh is a nightmare in general). Those buses would have taken forever to get through downtown without dedicated lanes (and at the time (in the 1970's) they were full of riders - one of my co-riders was a non-English speaking Italian (we spoke to each other in nods and gestures) who was an independent restaurant owner downtown (grilled meatball, sausage and Italian hoagies, etc. - best I ever had). The point is the riders were different in those days (1980's). I doubt you would find many restaurant owners riding the bus. There was much lower car ownership among young people starting out in the workplace and the demographics of bus riders was more consistently varied.
They built the busways in Pittsburgh to allow the buses to be express-like for several miles (there were a couple of stops with rare pick-ups and drop-offs until the bus got to the suburbs they were serving. At our apartment complex (the restaurant owner (he wasn't rich - he was making a living and employed people) lived in the same complex) in the suburbs, the parking lots were largely empty (seems bizarre to think about it now). They built the busways to keep the buses off the main arterials so the buses would have shorter times and to limit congestion on the main streets. While they served a purpose, they were very expensive - and ridership, of course has declined there with the decline in the city's population. And, of course, like everywhere else they have severe budget problems and difficulty maintaining infrastructure.
Dedicated bus lanes and transit stations in the middle of the street somehow make the streets safer - that obviously makes no sense. Let's put everyone waiting for a bus standing, sitting and waiting in the middle of the street (forcing everyone to cross the street no matter what direction they are coming from) and the pretend safety is being enhanced.
The dedicated lanes don't add much speed to the route. They gain speed from having fewer stops, meaning that this proposal discriminates against the disabled, blind and aged who have to walk further (or wheel themselves) in many cases to get to a bus stop (and forced to cross the street). Make it make sense. This proposal is a boondoggle that will hamper traffic flow and create more conflicts between pedestrians and traffic, not less. Additionally, they try to create speed on these "rapid transit" routes by speeding away from the stops before people can sit down, rack their bikes (one of the few times I rode the Red Line I almost fell over while trying to lift by bike onto their hanging racks) or grab a standing strap, again creating dangers for the disabled, blind and aged. These people proposing this need to be held to account.
The goal of BRT is the elimination of cars; to turn travel from a private activity into a government activity. From wikipedia, "A 2005 study of media bias in The Quarterly Journal of Economics ranked UI [Urban Institute] as the 11th most liberal of the 50 most-cited think tanks and policy groups, placing it between the NAACP and the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals."
Comments (previously sent to Freeman) I sent just before they bailed on the bill.
Representative Speedy:
I see that you, Rep. Julie McGuire and Rep. Bob Behning sponsored SB52 in the house. My initial elation that this bill came out of the House committee was dampened greatly by the prohibition on dedicated lanes being watered down to a basically one-year prohibition. As I indicated below when I sent the following e-mails to the Senate sponsors of the bill, I fully support the prohibition of dedicated lanes, which I hope would prevent INDYGO from implementing this boondoggle. I would request that the house change the bill back to at least a ten-year prohibition (a return to a permanent prohibition would be fantastic!). In that time frame, the disaster that is the Red Line (and the developing Purple Line) will be evident to all except the few who choose to ignore the reality, as the infrastructure issues and financial issues related to this scheme (including the use of heavy, expensive electric buses) becomes a full-scale crisis. Please share this e-mail with your co-sponsors (whose e-mails I did not find) and any other House representatives you wish. Thank you.
Part One:
As a bus rider, bike rider and former city planner (34 years of experience), I fully support your bill to prohibit dedicated bus lanes for the Blue Line. Planners who learn how to destroy cities and control people's lives in planning schools (I have a B.S. in Accounting and a M.A. in Geography and was a certified planner (AICP) for well over a decade) have been trying to micromanage where people live for decades and they believe that one of the ways to do this is to make driving so burdensome that people will ride their glorious transit lines (plus they like to brag to other planners in other cities that they have cool things too!). They use the excuse that they can get Federal money to fix other infrastructure along these transit corridors while at the same time expanding infrastructure that they will not be able to maintain. Make it make sense? In 10-15 years, when these transit stations are falling apart, they will be begging for funds to maintain all of this new infrastructure that is not needed. Should Indygo make some improvements to these transit corridors? Sure. But that improvement should consist of shelters where needed and bus pads and sidewalks (working with DPW) where substandard sidewalks exist. They do not need a dedicated bus lane. The Red Line is a joke (I've ridden it). It adds no real value. It is just a different bus (drivers barely give you enough time to get on and off the bus because they are trying to meet a faster schedule) that is more expensive, which suffers from more fareless riders and the same empty buses (almost every time I bike along that corridor I will see two buses back-to-back - which is a sign of too many buses and too few riders).
Removing lanes on Washington Street will be a disaster. They will want to argue that transit creates density and that density will improve the economic vitality of the corridor and use other cities as evidence - regardless of whether those cities are even remotely comparable. When they get desperate, they will trot out Washington D.C, Charlotte NC and even San Francisco and New York City as examples of transit successes as if Indianapolis is even remotely comparable (plus they are not successful by normal measurements - but are only successful by planning measures). San Francisco's land area is equivalent to Center Township and while the BART system connects to neighboring Oakland, by comparison no one rides it in Oakland and San Francisco ridership is boosted by tourism. Transit systems with reasonable ridership are in dense places. San Francisco is four times as dense as Center Township and nearly five times as dense as Indianapolis. In order for Indy to be of similar density (14, 298 people / sq. mile), Indianapolis would have to have nearly 5,200,000 people (The 2020 census had San Fran with 870,000 people but population projections indicate that have lost 200,000! people since 2020 - the 5.2 million figure is based on those projections). https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/san-francisco-ca-population How come the magic of transit has not prevented this decline? Other things are more important - like crime and housing costs. Even Detroit MI, whose population has declined by a million people in the last 90+ years is still 1.5 times more dense than Indianapolis! https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/detroit-mi-population. And no one is claiming that Detroit is a mecca of transit. Indianapolis has also lost population since the 2020 census according to projections despite any claims to the contrary. https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/indianapolis-in-population
The people that support these transit boondoggles benefit in some way (the riders benefit the least). The Washington Street bus has the most ridership, has sufficient bus frequency (buses arrive approx. every 15 minutes) and only needs supportive infrastructure for the riders; it doesn't need expensive transit stations or dedicated lanes that inhibit car and truck traffic and would require additional funding for maintenance which the government will steal from the public. Please believe that are more people out here who agree with you and not the Irvington residents (seemingly half or which are government employees) who will act like you are committing murder by trying to bring common sense to bear.
The truth is that none of these people ever ride them themselves. When they travel to other cities for Planning Conferences in places like San Francisco or Atlanta, do they take their light rail from the airport? No they don't, because it is too inconvenient. But they want everyone else to do what they won't do themselves.
So, please don't give up on this bill. We will all breathe easier when it passes. Every sensible person on the eastside is dreading the possibility of this permanent monument to stupidity being constructed on the eastside forever transforming this corridor - and not for the better.
Part Two:
Don't let the businesses cowering from the pressure of the Irvington residents prevent you from pressing forward with this bill. There is no justification for dedicated lanes anywhere in this city. When I lived in Pittsburgh, they had dedicated bus lanes downtown (Pittsburgh's downtown was very compact. They also had separate busways (using abandoned railroad tunnels for the southside busway). I rode the bus there and they kind of made sense for the bus riders, but they were terrible for the car drivers (driving in Pittsburgh is a nightmare in general). Those buses would have taken forever to get through downtown without dedicated lanes (and at the time (in the 1970's) they were full of riders - one of my co-riders was a non-English speaking Italian (we spoke to each other in nods and gestures) who was an independent restaurant owner downtown (grilled meatball, sausage and Italian hoagies, etc. - best I ever had). The point is the riders were different in those days (1980's). I doubt you would find many restaurant owners riding the bus. There was much lower car ownership among young people starting out in the workplace and the demographics of bus riders was more consistently varied.
They built the busways in Pittsburgh to allow the buses to be express-like for several miles (there were a couple of stops with rare pick-ups and drop-offs until the bus got to the suburbs they were serving. At our apartment complex (the restaurant owner (he wasn't rich - he was making a living and employed people) lived in the same complex) in the suburbs, the parking lots were largely empty (seems bizarre to think about it now). They built the busways to keep the buses off the main arterials so the buses would have shorter times and to limit congestion on the main streets. While they served a purpose, they were very expensive - and ridership, of course has declined there with the decline in the city's population. And, of course, like everywhere else they have severe budget problems and difficulty maintaining infrastructure.
A blogger's input:
https://naptownnumbers.substack.com/p/17000-vehicles-per-day
Part Three:
Dedicated bus lanes and transit stations in the middle of the street somehow make the streets safer - that obviously makes no sense. Let's put everyone waiting for a bus standing, sitting and waiting in the middle of the street (forcing everyone to cross the street no matter what direction they are coming from) and the pretend safety is being enhanced.
The dedicated lanes don't add much speed to the route. They gain speed from having fewer stops, meaning that this proposal discriminates against the disabled, blind and aged who have to walk further (or wheel themselves) in many cases to get to a bus stop (and forced to cross the street). Make it make sense. This proposal is a boondoggle that will hamper traffic flow and create more conflicts between pedestrians and traffic, not less. Additionally, they try to create speed on these "rapid transit" routes by speeding away from the stops before people can sit down, rack their bikes (one of the few times I rode the Red Line I almost fell over while trying to lift by bike onto their hanging racks) or grab a standing strap, again creating dangers for the disabled, blind and aged. These people proposing this need to be held to account.
The goal of BRT is the elimination of cars; to turn travel from a private activity into a government activity. From wikipedia, "A 2005 study of media bias in The Quarterly Journal of Economics ranked UI [Urban Institute] as the 11th most liberal of the 50 most-cited think tanks and policy groups, placing it between the NAACP and the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals."