IndyGo's Purple Line jumps to No. 1 in monthly ridership as Red Line, other routes falter

Indianapolis Star

23-04-2025

AI-assisted summary
IndyGo's Purple Line has become its most popular route, surpassing the Red Line in ridership since its October launch.
While the Purple Line's ridership has increased, the Red Line and Route 8 have seen declines since Nov. 1.
A 2022 rider survey revealed that 57% of IndyGo riders do not own a vehicle and have a household income below $25,000.
In the Purple Line's first full month of operation this past November, the new bus rapid transit line quickly established itself as IndyGo 's No. 1 route.
The margin by which Purple Line ridership outpaces that of the Red Line — IndyGo's first BRT service and No. 2 route — has only widened since then. Purple Line trips increased to a peak of 102,462 in March, roughly 21,000 more trips than IndyGo reported that month on the Red Line, which travels the same route for 13 stops between downtown and 38th Street.
When it comes to ridership, the Purple Line seems to be not just outperforming but stealing from the Red Line. Ridership on the older line, which opened in September 2019, has been 18-25% lower year-over-year in each month since the Purple Line debuted Oct. 13.
In March 2024, the Red Line was IndyGo's only route that surpassed 100,000 monthly trips, reporting 101,940. Last month, however, the Red Line reported just 81,087 trips — a 20% reduction from last year.
IndyGo officials expected that the Purple Line could siphon off some Red Line riders. Each BRT line arrives every 15-20 minutes at the same stations between the Julia Carson Transit Center downtown to the 38th and Park Street stop, so riders traveling within that area can board whichever bus comes first. At 38th and Park, the routes diverge as the Purple Line continues east to Lawrence while the Red Line heads north to Broad Ripple.
The 15.2-mile Purple Line is also 2.1 miles longer and travels past more residents overall, including dense lower-income neighborhoods on Indy's northeast side, so its robust ridership makes sense.
IndyGo built the Red Line first, however, because the 13.1-mile corridor from Broad Ripple to the University of Indianapolis boasts the city's densest concentration of people, jobs and low-income households. Nearly 150,000 jobs and more than 50,000 residents are within walking distance of the Red Line, while the Purple Line glides past nearly 135,000 jobs and the homes of more than 58,000 residents, according to IndyGo.
IndyGo leaders aren't worried that the Purple Line's ridership has surged ahead of the Red Line's, Chief Public Information Officer Carrie Black said. They expect to see more fluctuation between the two routes moving forward.
"Those two routes are doing exactly what they were designed to do," Black told IndyStar, "and that is to move people faster through the densest parts of our city."
Despite lower numbers to end 2024, the Red Line reported an annual high of 1,174,023 trips, a 7% increase from 2023 ridership.
The Red Line is not alone in its decline since the Purple Line began running.
IndyGo's No. 3 service, Route 8 (the future Blue Line), has reported between 10,000-20,000 fewer trips a month since Nov. 1, along with a number of smaller routes reporting declines. IndyGo's overall ridership during those five months, buoyed by the Purple Line, is only 1.4% lower.
Ridership on Route 8, which follows a different east-west path along Washington Street than the Purple Line's 38th Street route, had been mostly trending upward until Nov. 1, when year-over-year ridership declined by nearly 23,000 trips over the following two months. Route 8's 2024 ridership was about 20,000 trips short of the previous year's total, finishing at 1,073,880.
Black said there's no specific reason IndyGo can point to for Route 8's year-over-year decline. Ridership fluctuates based on several factors including construction, seasonal events, employment situations and the weather. She noted that a major detour on Route 8 between Tibbs Avenue and Holt Road could also be deterring riders.
"Ridership is unfortunately not a perfect system and a perfect story," Black said. "Sometimes ridership will drop and then it will shoot back up, and we don't always know why."
Red Line trips increase in 2024 as overall IndyGo ridership rebounds
Since opening in 2019, Red Line ridership has grown in every year except 2021, when the first full year of pandemic restrictions worsened a worldwide decline in public transit ridership. IndyGo's total trips plummeted from 9.2 million in 2019 to just above 5 million in 2021.
IndyGo has boosted ridership gradually in each year since. The 2024 total of more than 6.9 million rides is the largest volume recorded since 2019.
"People went back to work," Black said of the past few years. "Companies basically ordered their employees to return to the office and the workplace, and thus our ridership continued to rebound."
IndyGo expects ridership to keep rising with the construction of the Blue Line, which will replace Route 8 and run from the Indianapolis International Airport to Cumberland. Work began this year and will finish sometime in 2028.
The 24-mile route is the longest and most expensive of IndyGo's BRT routes, at an estimated $387 million. The 15.2-mile Purple Line's budget was $188 million while the 13-mile Red Line cost about $96.3 million.
Who's riding the Purple and Red Lines?
Despite what the numbers show, for many IndyGo riders there's little distinction between the Purple and Red Lines.
Most riders leaving downtown Monday afternoon were heading home from work. Others said they were using the Purple Line to travel to night shifts along 38th Street or to exercise at the gym.
Afrida Alma Aditi, 30, said that since moving to Indianapolis last June to work at an architecture firm on Monument Circle, she's been riding the Purple and Red lines downtown almost every weekday from her north side apartment near The Children's Museum on 30th Street.
A Bangladesh native who earned a graduate degree in Ohio, Aditi said she grew up relying on public transit and has made her way in the Midwest without a car or driver's license. She deliberately chose to rent an apartment near the Red Line last summer, and her life got easier in October when the Purple Line started running.
"When it was just the Red Line, I had to check the bus times more often. If I missed one, I had to wait for a long time," Aditi said. "Now, even if I miss one, there's another one just after that."
Charles Samuelson, a 39-year-old state employee who lives near the Fall Creek and Meridian stop, said he sold his car soon after the Red Line opened in 2019, happy not to worry anymore about budgeting for gas or car insurance.
Usually he rides his bicycle a few miles to work, but on windy or rainy days he takes the bus. Aside from the occasional belligerent passenger, Samuelson said, he's enjoyed the BRT lines for their easy access to grocery stores, libraries and entertainment districts like Broad Ripple.
What IndyGo survey shows about riders
IndyGo's last comprehensive rider survey in 2022, before the Purple Line opened, found that 57% of riders say their household lacks a vehicle. That same percentage of riders report household incomes below $25,000 a year.
Nearly three in four IndyGo riders say they're employed, including 17% who work part-time.
Red Line riders tend to be younger and more affluent than the typical IndyGo rider. They're two times as likely to report an annual household income of more than $60,000. About 27% are between 24 and 34 years old.