An urban advocacy group is trying to bring a big-city concept to Indianapolis: car sharing. People for Urban
Progress cites environmental benefits as well as cost savings for urban dwellers who might find it practical to ditch their
seldom-used vehicles.
Delaware County’s representative on the CIRTA board will be Marta Moody, executive director of
the Delaware-Muncie Plan Commission.
Delaware County has become the 10th county to join the Central Indiana Regional Transportation Authority, the quasi-governmental
organization announced today.
We applaud the efforts of those who are laying the groundwork for viable mass transit in the Indianapolis area.
Local leaders and, soon, a national team of experts, are quietly developing a strategy to revitalize Marion County’s biggest
concentration of brownfield sites and impoverished urban neighborhoods, centered at East 22nd Street and the Monon Trail.
Architecture and urban design students from Ball State have created a vision for urban renewal that is arguably more compelling
than the Central Indiana Regional
Transit Authority’s principal, utilitarian goal of reducing northeast-side highway congestion and air pollution by running
a diesel commuter train atop the old Nickel Plate Railroad corridor.
To support quality of life initiatives and boost economic development, Indiana government and its citizens must develop quality mass transit systems.
The Metropolitan Development Commission gave Indianapolis area transportation planners the green light Nov. 12 to do an expedited
study that would show locations, cost and potential ridership for mass transit routes region-wide.
The Metropolitan Development Commission has given city planners the green light to seek an expedited study that would provide
a clearer picture of what a comprehensive regional transit system could look like and how much it would cost.
The airport authority should not assume a 3-percent growth rate because of the new airport, and the FFA Convention was not
as wildly successful as reported. Mayor Peterson shouldn’t be held out as a good example of a mayor who supports public transportation.
Planners and politicians spent the better part of a decade and untold millions of dollars studying a mass transit system between
downtown and the suburbs. They have little to show for it except mounds of reports and an estimate of $690 million, but the
boys in bib overalls at the Indiana Transportation Museum think they can get it done for much less.
If the introduction of modern streetcars to one West Coast city can be replicated here, Indianapolis would see new, higher-density
housing and related retail and restaurants shadowing the line. Fallow areas crossed by the tracks would become fertile for
new investment. At least that was the case in Portland, Ore., a city mesmerizing to Indianapolis civic leaders, who last month
formed Downtown Indianapolis Streetcar Corp. They risk being run out of town on a rail: a streetcar line will cost…
Whether it’s southbound I-69 traffic backed up almost to Noblesville, or northbound I-465 traffic a parking lot all the way
to 56th Street, the northeast highway system is grossly inadequate at peak hours. But a report issued last month by an INDOT
consultant shows a radical, $600 million reconfiguration is in the works.
The idea of rapid transit is popular locally, but there’s no consensus on how to finance it. For construction alone, it would cost at least $546 million for suburban express bus service up to $1.4 billion for an "automated guideway" system similar to a monorail. And that's for only one corridor.
Just 5,900 Marion and Hamilton County commuters would park their cars in favor of rapid transit if that were an option, according to data from a late-2001 report for Indianapolis’ Metropolitan Planning Organization by New York firm Parsons Brinckerhoff.
