Indy MPO report explores regional freight and passenger rail traffic
Posted by Curt Ailes in Transit on Dec 29th, 2010 | 0 comments
Recently, the Indianapolis MPO released a report (click to open 33 page .pdf) created to examine the spaghetti bowl of freight train traffic that comes and goes in the Indianapolis region. While this wasn’t a point of major debate through out the Indyconnect meeting periods, it bares a lot of responsibility when it comes to firming up the underbelly of passenger rail connections in the Indyconnect plan. On my personal blog, I touched on this months ago and cited a report created in 2004 that explored moving freight traffic to the old belt railway that circles the DT area. In that post, I...
Could a new People Mover Station spur development?
Posted by Curt Ailes in Transit on Dec 17th, 2010 | 7 comments
The Clarian People Mover in Indianapolis is a privately owned and operated elevated fixed guideway transit structure. It closely resembles a “monorail” but in fact is not. It was built with the purpose of connecting medical facilities in downtown Indianapolis’ NW medical district.  It connects Methodist hospital on it’s north station, with the IU Medical complex on it’s south end, and by extension, IUPUI; if you are willing to walk a few hallways and take an elevator to get there. There is one stop midway through it’s route to serve another medical related...
Justifying Rail transit for Indy & where it should start
Posted by Curt Ailes in Transit on Aug 3rd, 2010 | 21 comments
In February of 2010, the city of Indianapolis made an exciting announcement. Mayor Greg Ballard announced that a task force had been formed a year and a half prior to study the long term future of transportation in the Indianapolis area. They coined this marketing blitz, Indyconnect. This wasn’t simply public transportation, this was public transportation, automobile transit, pedestrian and bicycle access as well as issues regarding freight travel on rail and freeway. What followed, was a series of public meetings that engaged the public on the initial plan and asked for input on what the...
