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IndyGo was woefully unprepared for the increased demand during the Super Bowl, and has admitted as much. They were doing the best they could with the very limited resources they are given. They did take busses from some other routes and added to the Washington Street route, though what they added was clearly not enough to handle the demand.
I use CTA everytime I am Chicago, and it is a superior system to Indianapolis. Comparing the two though, is unfair. Indianapolis is not Chicago, and it will never ever ever ever be Chicago.
True, Indianapolis is not, nor will it ever be, Chicago.
But does that mean Indianapolis should not strive to have a system just as efficient, if not more, as Chicago? No.
A lack of options in a city will effect who can, and wants, to live in that city. And currently Indy lacks any real or significant transportation options as evidenced by the Super Bowl and the 30 minute wait times for busses on what could very well be argued, Indianapolis' most "important" street: Washington.
If the city and residents are fine with the complete lack of any meaningful transportation options, more power to them. But on the same note, the city and residents can't complain, bemoan, or huff and puff when the city is relegated to second, or even third class, status as a city in America. Options are what make a city great. Options are what entice people to go there. Options give you another way when your first plan is not feasible, or obtainable.
I truly think, but I certainly do not hope, that the lack of ways to get around the city will prove to be the thing that puts Indianapolis into a tail spin when gas prices hit a price point that people can't, or won't, afford to pay anymore.
If gas hits $5 a gallon, and I were living in Indy working at my old job, I would have literally not been able to afford to drive to work. And I certainly couldn't depend on the IndyGo system to get to work, let alone live a life where I could go to all the amenities that the city offers. So what other options would I have had in Indy?
Move. That's it. Move to another location. And if I'm moving so that I can afford to get to work, why not move to a place that financially allows me to access all parts of the city? That is: Why stay in Indy and limit myself to the number of things I can do in the city to what is close to my location, when I could just move to Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, etc., that have transportation options that span the city and don't limit me to how much gas I can afford?
BONUS: I've read some claims on threads that bus stops work just as well, if not better than rail stations at providing "stability" for businesses located at those stops. Walking down Washington Street while waiting for the bus (and why not walk when you have to wait 30 minutes for the bus to come by? I might as well travel some of the distance that I need to go, and get some exercise) I passed a bus stop that was literally right in front of a Subway. It's not a Subway anymore, just an empty building. Would it still be empty if people didn't have to wait 30 minutes to get their footlong fix? I don't know for sure, but I think it's safe to say the amount of time waiting between busses certainly didn't help it.
If the city wants to go half A-------- with their public transportation, they can't expect to get better than half A------- results.
True, Indianapolis is not, nor will it ever be, Chicago.
But does that mean Indianapolis should not strive to have a system just as efficient, if not more, as Chicago? No.
A lack of options in a city will effect who can, and wants, to live in that city. And currently Indy lacks any real or significant transportation options as evidenced by the Super Bowl and the 30 minute wait times for busses on what could very well be argued, Indianapolis' most "important" street: Washington.
If the city and residents are fine with the complete lack of any meaningful transportation options, more power to them. But on the same note, the city and residents can't complain, bemoan, or huff and puff when the city is relegated to second, or even third class, status as a city in America. Options are what make a city great. Options are what entice people to go there. Options give you another way when your first plan is not feasible, or obtainable.
I truly think, but I certainly do not hope, that the lack of ways to get around the city will prove to be the thing that puts Indianapolis into a tail spin when gas prices hit a price point that people can't, or won't, afford to pay anymore.
If gas hits $5 a gallon, and I were living in Indy working at my old job, I would have literally not been able to afford to drive to work. And I certainly couldn't depend on the IndyGo system to get to work, let alone live a life where I could go to all the amenities that the city offers. So what other options would I have had in Indy?
Move. That's it. Move to another location. And if I'm moving so that I can afford to get to work, why not move to a place that financially allows me to access all parts of the city? That is: Why stay in Indy and limit myself to the number of things I can do in the city to what is close to my location, when I could just move to Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, etc., that have transportation options that span the city and don't limit me to how much gas I can afford?
BONUS: I've read some claims on threads that bus stops work just as well, if not better than rail stations at providing "stability" for businesses located at those stops. Walking down Washington Street while waiting for the bus (and why not walk when you have to wait 30 minutes for the bus to come by? I might as well travel some of the distance that I need to go, and get some exercise) I passed a bus stop that was literally right in front of a Subway. It's not a Subway anymore, just an empty building. Would it still be empty if people didn't have to wait 30 minutes to get their footlong fix? I don't know for sure, but I think it's safe to say the amount of time waiting between busses certainly didn't help it.
If the city wants to go half A-------- with their public transportation, they can't expect to get better than half A------- results.
I went downtown for festivities twice and paid $20 each time to park, and I had no problem finding a space. While I'm not challenging the veracity of your claims, understand that for the vast majority of Super Bowl visitors, I don't think transportation was a problem. In fact, you're the only person from whom I've heard such a complaint. That said, I think Indy got really lucky by having two East Coast teams in the Super Bowl. Had, say, the Packers and Steelers met for a rematch, I think downtown Indy would've been flooded by fans driving into the city, which would've made parking much more scarce, driven people onto public transportation, and then the problem would've been much, much worse. As it was, most of the out-of-town visitors flew in and caught transportation downtown. Once downtown, they were set.
As for your tirade against Indianapolis settling for mediocre public transportation, I suggest you research the debate over IndyConnect. There's much popular and corporate support for upgrading public transportation, albeit not everyone sees the value in rail. The problem is not the people of Indianapolis, I would argue. It's the yahoos in the rest of the state who won't allow Indy to have its public referendum on IndyConnect.
As for your tirade against Indianapolis settling for mediocre public transportation, I suggest you research the debate over IndyConnect. There's much popular and corporate support for upgrading public transportation, albeit not everyone sees the value in rail. The problem is not the people of Indianapolis, I would argue. It's the yahoos in the rest of the state who won't allow Indy to have its public referendum on IndyConnect.
Public transit in Indy is making strides, but it's always going to be shackled a bit due to the lack of density.
150 buses that cover roughly 350 route miles isn't a lot. There just isn't enough demand to support a larger fleet, but the underlying problem is that you can't just take a bus away from a route to fill heightened local traffic demands elsewhere without leaving a gap in service. A certain # of buses will always be out of commission at any given time for either maintenance or cleaning, so flexibility is somewhat limited. Adding to the fleet would address this, but ridership is low, so that comes at a greater cost than it does elsewhere.
Compare to Chicago (more for effect rather than as a valid comparison):
1800 buses for 1900 route miles. So 12x the bus fleet for 5.5x the route miles. The ridership ratio per bus is the key here. 12x the bus fleet but a daily ridership that is over 30x as high. Three times the paying customer base per bus and 7.5x the customer base per route mile.
St. Louis MetroBus:
433 buses
abt 1100 route miles
110,000 daily ridership, or about 4x the daily ridership.
St. Louis has the roughly the same route mile/bus burden, but passenger volume is greater thanks to density (200 customers per bus in Indy vs. 250 in STL vs. 600 per bus in Chicago).
Services will (and should) be expanded over time, but we all should recognize that any expansion will come at a greater cost than it would in other metros.
If gas hits $5 a gallon, and I were living in Indy working at my old job, I would have literally not been able to afford to drive to work. And I certainly couldn't depend on the IndyGo system to get to work, let alone live a life where I could go to all the amenities that the city offers. So what other options would I have had in Indy?
If you can't afford gas, how could you afford that many amenities? Is it really important for you to be able to drop $50 eating out, $200/month on stuff or activities, etc.? Seriously, gas has been over $3/gallon for a long time. Say gas went to $5/gallon. Say your car gets 20 miles per gallon and magically you live 20 miles from work, a 40 mile round trip every day, five days a week. So with gas at $3/gallon, your cost to get to work is $6/day*5 days/wk*4 wks/month*12 mo/year=$1,440 a year for gas. So it goes to $5/gal and it is now $2,400/year for work gas. If $1,000 makes or breaks anyone, they should seriously consider downsizing their lifestyle immediately. And, if one has to be constantly going out and getting their fulfillment of amenities, surely they could do without a cable TV bill? Home phone line? High speed internet? Plus their energy cost should be fairly low since the AC/furnace would only be needed at normal temps few evenings a week.
Quote:
Originally Posted by A2DAC1985
...why not move to a place that financially allows me to access all parts of the city? That is: Why stay in Indy and limit myself to the number of things I can do in the city to what is close to my location, when I could just move to Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, etc., that have transportation options that span the city and don't limit me to how much gas I can afford?
A $1,000 broke you in Indy, yet you can afford those cities? I guess this also includes have no car? OK, but cars really aren't all that costly. I've went two to three years after paying off cars. However, say you never have a car payment. That now means flying to relatives or places of interest, and renting a vehicle as well. And since you don't have car insurance, you would have to buy their insurance. Seriously, this is a savings of at most $5,000/year. Again, if $5,000/year is make or break for a person, good luck being able to afford all the amenities of Chicago, NYC, Boston, Phily, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by A2DAC1985
BONUS: I've read some claims on threads that bus stops work just as well, if not better than rail stations at providing "stability" for businesses located at those stops. ...a bus stop that was literally right in front of a Subway. It's not a Subway anymore, just an empty building. Would it still be empty if people didn't have to wait 30 minutes to get their footlong fix? I don't know for sure, but I think it's safe to say the amount of time waiting between busses certainly didn't help it.
Picking the most prevalent fast food joint in the nation and using it as an example really isn't a good example. I want to know where they were? For starters, it shouldn't be surprising in Indy since there is a large number of working poor, poor, or lower middle class people riding the bus. I would say chances are there is a better likelihood that the bulk of IndyGo ridership is much closer to lower income than middle or upper income. Even though $5 foot longs sound cheap, fact remains some folks might not want to part with even $5. Plus, I'm not sure how waiting around causes people to go hungry. I wait in lines for many things, but seeing food places doesn't cause me to just start eating.
Public transit in Indy is making strides, but it's always going to be shackled a bit due to the lack of density.
150 buses that cover roughly 350 route miles isn't a lot. There just isn't enough demand to support a larger fleet, but the underlying problem is that you can't just take a bus away from a route to fill heightened local traffic demands elsewhere without leaving a gap in service. A certain # of buses will always be out of commission at any given time for either maintenance or cleaning, so flexibility is somewhat limited. Adding to the fleet would address this, but ridership is low, so that comes at a greater cost than it does elsewhere.
Compare to Chicago (more for effect rather than as a valid comparison):
1800 buses for 1900 route miles. So 12x the bus fleet for 5.5x the route miles. The ridership ratio per bus is the key here. 12x the bus fleet but a daily ridership that is over 30x as high. Three times the paying customer base per bus and 7.5x the customer base per route mile.
St. Louis MetroBus:
433 buses
abt 1100 route miles
110,000 daily ridership, or about 4x the daily ridership.
St. Louis has the roughly the same route mile/bus burden, but passenger volume is greater thanks to density (200 customers per bus in Indy vs. 250 in STL vs. 600 per bus in Chicago).
Services will (and should) be expanded over time, but we all should recognize that any expansion will come at a greater cost than it would in other metros.
Everyone continues to think uber density is required for mass transit. It isn't, moderate density is just as sufficient as long as there is buy in and that's the key. Neither CTA or Metra stop at every corner for rail which means someone has to travel somewhere. Likewise with the South Shore. Density along the SS route is non-existent mainly due to heavy industry to the north esp in Lake County where the density along the route isn't even 1k per if I'm not mistaken but yet SS is oddly successful even though they charge an arm and a leg for it. Asking a car centric city to fork over billions for public transportation is a tough sell regardless of what car centric city is asking.
You are literally asking people to fork over additional money for the chance of using a method of transportation that gives them less freedom and therefore less likely to use it. This is on top of already having their tax dollars continue to pay for road upkeep which they do use. IndyGo is not successful in fact, they state how crappy they are on their own site. Even if the state allows the referendum, it's a tough sell, a lot tougher than people think seeing as how a huge brunt will fall on property owners who already have to deal with local schools needing more money in subdivision style housing covering over 50% of this city where people drive and no sidewalks in the townships. This isn't Denver who already had a high bus ridership prior to their lines. Old city limits can pull it off because road infrastructure is there as well as sidewalks, the townships not so much. Franklin and Decatur, forget about it, the roads can't even handle a city bus unless it's up and down Kentucky Ave or Emerson respectively, they are not getting into the communities without additional road work which means more money.
As sad as it is to say, Indianapolis was designed with the automobile in mind.
If I had to pick, I'd look at urban areas (not metros) that are reasonably close to Indy's size, say 900K to 2.3 million vs. Indy's urban area pop of abt. 1.4 million. ith similar density profiles. Density is difficult to get a true measure of because certain areas have really dense cores, but sprawl, while others are more consistently dense. NYC vs. LA is the classic example. LA's avg density is greater, but the median New Yorker lives in a more dense neighborhood than the median Angelino.
This guy does as good a job as anyone at coming up with a "density index" accounting for these factors:
The most similar urban areas considering pop and density are roughly:
Orlando 87,800
Columbus 63,200
KC abt 50,000
Pittsburgh 185,100
St. Louis 93,500
Austin 104,000
Memphis abt 30K
Cincinnati 52,900
Indy is at about 30K.
ATL is just so much bigger that it will contain substantially more high density areas even though the city sprawls forever.
Note: using the density index can be somewhat misleading when matching to ridership. For example, in their inner neighborhods (where ridership is highest), STL, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh are much more dense. STL has rail too, which diverts ridership from buses of another 50K or so. The biggest problem is that bus ridership really needs areas of 4,000 people/sq mi to make it hugely successful. Very few people in the area live in neighborhoods w/ that level of density. Indy is more or less uniformly dense below that threshold. Just looking at pop density in census tracts for Marion Co. vs. STL city+county:
9000+ density: 86,000 people in STL, 0 in Indy
8000+: 126,000 vs. 8,000
7000+: 193,000 vs. 26,000
6000+: 287,000 vs. 67,000
5000+: 462,000 vs. 160,000
4000+: 721,000 vs. 282,000
Some in lower density areas will be willing to take the bus if the stop happens to be close to their home just as some living in higher density areas won't because their employment is located in an area no served by transit, but the general trends hold. The "bus market" in the core urban area is 2.5x larger in STL.
Everyone continues to think uber density is required for mass transit. It isn't, moderate density is just as sufficient as long as there is buy in and that's the key. Neither CTA or Metra stop at every corner for rail which means someone has to travel somewhere. Likewise with the South Shore. Density along the SS route is non-existent mainly due to heavy industry to the north esp in Lake County where the density along the route isn't even 1k per if I'm not mistaken but yet SS is oddly successful even though they charge an arm and a leg for it. Asking a car centric city to fork over billions for public transportation is a tough sell regardless of what car centric city is asking.
Uber density isn't required for bus, but the density that is required (abt 4000/sq mile+) isn't even there in most of Indy either. That's the problem. Few people want to take the bus if they need to walk more than a quarter mile to get to their stop on either end of their trip. The right sort of neighborhood would be similar to those on either side of College from about 50th to the river past Broad Ripple. That's 4K per square mile right there. The suburban style housing from the 60s onward is probably only 60% of the level that would allow service to take off. See the STL city+county vs. Marion Co density breaks from my prior post for a decent illustration. Fewer than 1 in 3 Marion Co. residents live in dense enough environments to generally support bus transit. Fewer than 1% live in immediate areas where bus transit becomes more widely adopted (8K + density). No one lives in areas that have the density that require public transit to become a necessary part of life.
IndyGo could be the best run mass transit organization in the world, but they aren't going to eliminate the ridership issue thanks to this problem.
If you can't afford gas, how could you afford that many amenities? Is it really important for you to be able to drop $50 eating out, $200/month on stuff or activities, etc.? Seriously, gas has been over $3/gallon for a long time. Say gas went to $5/gallon. Say your car gets 20 miles per gallon and magically you live 20 miles from work, a 40 mile round trip every day, five days a week. So with gas at $3/gallon, your cost to get to work is $6/day*5 days/wk*4 wks/month*12 mo/year=$1,440 a year for gas. So it goes to $5/gal and it is now $2,400/year for work gas. If $1,000 makes or breaks anyone, they should seriously consider downsizing their lifestyle immediately. And, if one has to be constantly going out and getting their fulfillment of amenities, surely they could do without a cable TV bill? Home phone line? High speed internet? Plus their energy cost should be fairly low since the AC/furnace would only be needed at normal temps few evenings a week.
A $1,000 broke you in Indy, yet you can afford those cities? I guess this also includes have no car? OK, but cars really aren't all that costly. I've went two to three years after paying off cars. However, say you never have a car payment. That now means flying to relatives or places of interest, and renting a vehicle as well. And since you don't have car insurance, you would have to buy their insurance. Seriously, this is a savings of at most $5,000/year. Again, if $5,000/year is make or break for a person, good luck being able to afford all the amenities of Chicago, NYC, Boston, Phily, etc.
Picking the most prevalent fast food joint in the nation and using it as an example really isn't a good example. I want to know where they were? For starters, it shouldn't be surprising in Indy since there is a large number of working poor, poor, or lower middle class people riding the bus. I would say chances are there is a better likelihood that the bulk of IndyGo ridership is much closer to lower income than middle or upper income. Even though $5 foot longs sound cheap, fact remains some folks might not want to part with even $5. Plus, I'm not sure how waiting around causes people to go hungry. I wait in lines for many things, but seeing food places doesn't cause me to just start eating.
Cost of living drops 30% from moving to Indianapolis from Chicago.
Hence why over 50,000 Chicagoans did just that in the past 10 years.
Plus taxes drop 35% too. None of the Crook County Corruption there. And even Chicagoans called it Crook County.... Priceless.
Also if you factor in your average wage in Indianapolis its only 5% lower than Chicago so you could say your disposible income rises 25% from Chicago to Indy.
I always look at disposible income over everything cause thats what youll be spending.
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