Urban Indy

IndyGo and Super Bowl organizers were thinking ahead when they were planning transportation and parking for the Super Bowl week in Indianapolis. Park & Ride lots were located, shuttle services were organized, and IndyGo submitted for and received a CMAQ grant to provide free fixedroute boardings from February 2nd through February 5th. As a result of high demand for parking downtown, ridership on IndyGo fixed route service has spiked tremendously. The first week following the … Read entire article »

Dear Indiana lawmakers, I hope that you are enjoying a brief respite from the short session and taking in what our fine capital city has to offer. The Super Bowl is here this week and our city is displaying the fruits of 40 years of effort to revitalize the city’s core, and indeed primary economic engine of our entire state. Thousands of people from the region and in fact the entire country, have descended on our city to work, play and spend money. It represents a coming of age for a town that was pretty sleepy when most of you were growing through your impressionable years. I suppose that makes a lot of sense now when I look back at the last month of legislation and how it was handled. By that, … Read entire article »

HB1073 (Public Mass Transit) was dealt a heavy blow today when it went down 10-11 in the House Ways & Means committee this morning. Partisan bickering erupted early on with Representative Crawford singling out the labor language in the bill. Jeff Espich, committee Chairman, pointed out that he had stripped half of the labor related language out but it appeared the Democrats on the committee were not going to budge and continued to vote no. To … Read entire article »

I don’t think that it is a secret to any Urban Indy writer or reader that I have invested A LOT of personal (and family) time over the last 3 years taking photos, writing, travelling to various cities with better transit systems including Portland, DC, Charlotte and Chicago and dragging my family along the way for “another one of dad’s transit trips!”. Full disclosure, my family has also had the privilege of hosting regional transit officials of the highest order over delicious meals prepared by my wife which include but are not limited to lasagna, pasta and with plenty of red wine, and local beer. I would like to think that the Urban Indy group has had a pretty good say in what has become Indy Connect. While we are not 100% … Read entire article »

This was sent to us from the leaders of the transition coalition: Thank for you for signing the petition to support transit funding in Indiana.  The House Ways and Means Committee is considering HB 1073 which would: 1.       A method for the public to express their support for transit funding through a referendum; 2.       Local Home Rule, the role of local government to make decisions in the best interests of the people it serves; 3.       A method to partially fund mass transit through the flexibility to increase a local option income tax to become a dedicated funding source. We contacted you in November to let you know there will be calls to act and contact Indiana legislators.  This is our first call to action!  We need your help NOW! There are two preferred ways … Read entire article »

  HB1073 (click to see official bill) is the initial volley by the Central Indiana Transit Task Force to state lawmakers. The summary of the bill is as follows: Public mass transportation. Specifies that a county or city council (other than the city-county council of Marion County) may elect by ordinance to provide revenue to a public transportation corporation from the city’s or the county’s distributive share of county adjusted gross income taxes, county option income taxes, or county economic … Read entire article »