Indiana's other large cities have mass transit. Why don't those in Hamilton County?

Indianapolis Star

2 days ago

It's dark outside and much of Indianapolis is still sleeping, but Carlos Wilson is boarding a shuttle bus that leaves downtown promptly at 5:10 a.m.
The bus hustles up Interstate 65 to the Lafayette Square Mall and picks up two more passengers, joining Wilson, 39, on the morning commute. In a few minutes, Wilson gets off near the CSL Plasma Warehouse in Whitestown, where he works.
All of the commuters on the Whitestown Connector have two things in common: They live in Indianapolis and found employment outside of the city in search of higher paying jobs. The connector shuttle bus, a free service from the Central Indiana Regional Transportation Authority, helps Wilson and the others get to work as they save to repair broken-down cars or buy new vehicles, and in one passenger's case, he's adapting to the loss of his eyesight and ability to drive.
"I have been offered even higher paying jobs in other counties around here, but I don't have transportation to get there," Wilson said.
It's difficult for commuters without cars to reach Hamilton County, the wealthiest county in the state. That's because there's no public bus that runs between the county and Indianapolis. And inside the county's borders, where the population has ballooned, robust public transit systems are nonexistent.
That makes Hamilton County an outlier. Of the Hoosier state's 10 most populous cities, every city has had a municipal bus service for decades, except for Carmel, Fishers and Noblesville.
Despite some signs that Hamilton County needs, and some residents want, more efficient public transportation, making it a reality in suburban areas is a challenge due to the price tag and concerns about increased crime some fear outsiders could bring. A decade ago, an effort to extend Indianapolis' public transit system, IndyGo, to Hamilton County failed.
Today it's still not a top priority for local leaders. None of the four Hamilton County mayors expressed immediate interest in connecting the county to Indianapolis via mass public transit.
"We don't have the infrastructure right now to support it," Westfield Mayor Scott Willis said. "Then there's cost side of it. We don't have the money."
Hamilton County's peer cities are ahead when it comes to public transportation.
South Bend, with a population of 103,000 people, the same size as Fishers and Carmel, had 1.2 million passenger trips on its 17-route system in 2023. In Lafayette, with 72,000 people, which is comparable to Noblesville in size, the bus system had 4.4 million passenger trips in 2023, according to the most recent Indiana Department of Transportation Public Transit Annual Report.
Even small cities, with fewer than 60,000 residents, such as Terre Haute, Kokomo, Richmond, Columbus and Michigan City, have long-running bus services.
The caveat is the bus systems are not perfect.
In the peer cities, they are expensive to operate and heavily subsidized by tax dollars. Additionally, passenger fares cover less than 25% of operating revenue, often much less.
And suburban areas, like Hamilton County, are a challenge to implement a public transit system in, said Aaron Isaacs, who writes about suburban transit and worked for the Metro Transit system in Minneapolis and St. Paul for 33 years.
Suburban streets weren't designed for mass transit, he said.
'Suburban populations are spread out by design and without a large downtown,' Isaacs said. 'That makes it hard to plan an efficient system. It's a hard market to serve and always expensive on a per passenger basis.'
Though Carmel, Fishers and Westfield are all expanding their downtowns, they are 'working backward' from traditional cities, Isaacs said.
Suburbs of major cities usually first start by linking with the city's existing bus system to serve as the spine of connections within the suburbs. It's a cheaper approach and allows for a more measured build-out, Isaacs said.
But Carmel and Fishers have balked at or abandoned doing just that in the past.
The closest the county came to landing mass public transit was a decade ago, when there was talk of leaning on IndyGo.
The regional plan for IndyGo's bus rapid transit system called for an extension of the Red Line along College Avenue through Carmel and into Westfield, and a Green Line up to Fishers, possibly along the Nickel Plate Railroad Corridor.
The then-mayors of Westfield, Carmel and Noblesville approved the plans, but no township referendums were ever put on the ballot in Hamilton County. Voters would have had to approve the referendums to release local funds and allow the public transit plans to move forward.
Hamilton County Commissioner Christine Altman, a longtime transit advocate, said Westfield was most eager to join and close to putting it to the vote. But leaders decided it would be better to wait until Marion County itself voted.
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'The people in Marion (County) were worried that a vote in Westfield at the same time could damage the chances of passing because a major campaign against it in Westfield was expected and that might bleed over into Marion,' she said.
Marion County voters did approve their referendum in 2016, helping to fund the Red Line and expand IndyGo services in Indianapolis. But then-Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard's enthusiasm for the system waned. The former mayor said he realized, during negotiations with the City of Indianapolis officials, that the funding wasn't there for the Red Line into Hamilton County to operate properly. The referendum was never brought to Clay Township voters.
In Fishers and Noblesville, leaders, including Altman, eventually decided to build a rail-trail on the Nickel Plate, instead of the Green Line.
'I faced the reality that there would be less resistance to the trail,' Altman said.
For a suburban transit system to launch, voters and politicians have to accept that it's going to need local tax revenue and is going to have lower ridership than other systems. But that's a hard sell, said Joseph L. Schofer, a Northwestern University Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
'It's a myth that it pays for itself, that doesn't happen except in the largest cities,' Schofer said. 'You're going to run some empty buses and some elected officials are going to go apoplectic about that. But airplanes aren't always full either.'
Politicians usually follow the lead of the public, and in the suburbs support for transit is difficult to gather, Schofer said.
'The opposition usually comes from single-family households that don't want strangers coming in their town,' Schofer said.
For years, David Glenn, a Carmel business owner, has talked about how there's an entire population of people who would benefit from more accessible public transportation in Central Indiana.
Glenn is the president of CoasterStone and Buttons Galore, which sells absorbent stone coasters and other branded merchandise. He also has a brother, who can't drive due to an intellectual disability.
Glenn said his brother struggled for years to get from his condo in Marion County to work in Hamilton County. He also remembers an employee who couldn't get from Marion County to work at CoasterStone's warehouse in Brownsburg due to the lack of accessible and robust public transportation in the region.
'It's a community service to help people to get to work in a reasonable fashion without all the red tape,' Glenn said. 'The world I live in, I see people who can't drive due to disabilities, but this issue impacts people who can't afford a car or lost their licenses as well.'
The Central Indiana Regional Transportation Authority does have a program providing transportation to seniors and people with disabilities via the ride service company zTrip. The transportation authority pays for the bulk of trip costs, but the rider has to cover extra fees for crossing county lines or for traveling within counties outside Marion.
Glenn is not the only business owner thinking about the lack of public transit in Hamilton County. The rising cost of housing is making it increasingly difficult for workers, especially those in hospitality, health care, and service sectors, to live in Hamilton County, said Jack Russell, president and CEO of OneZone Chamber.
'Without reliable public transit, the challenge is compounded,' Russell told IndyStar. 'Access to reliable transportation directly affects workforce availability, economic mobility, and regional connectivity. We recognize that the current public transit options are limited and do not meet the needs of many employers and employees — particularly in a growing county like ours.'
A report from the workforce agency Invest Hamilton County details that Hamilton County will need more than 15,700 workers from outside the county by 2030 to fill jobs.
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'The service sector jobs don't align with our resident demographics,' said Mike Thibideau, president and CEO of Invest Hamilton County. 'This is a potent workforce challenge.'
Community members in Hamilton County have also shown support for expanding public transportation options recently.
In a City of Carmel survey focusing on transportation and mobility in the city, 93% of the 1,300 respondents reported having reliable access to a personal vehicle. But more than 80% of the respondents said they would support reliable public transportation if it helped people with disabilities or no other options get around.
Almost half of the respondents of the transportation and mobility survey were unaware of Carmel's public transportation options.
Carmel residents can use the Hamilton County Express, a reservation-based shuttle system that goes throughout the county. But getting a ride on the Hamilton County Express requires 24-hour notice, and the most recent data from the Indiana Department of Transportation shows the shuttle system had about 63,000 passenger trips in 2023.
Younger adults, people with disabilities, and lower-income residents who responded to the survey were more likely to report transportation challenges and more likely to say that they would consider using public transit.
'Most people, if they're using anything, are using rideshare services and those costs are high for daily use,' said David Littlejohn, Carmel's transportation systems administrator and ADA coordinator. 'We do have the Hamilton County Express that people can use. Sometimes it's difficult to use, although it provides for people who absolutely need it in the community.'
For most elected officials in Hamilton County, the lack of public transportation is just not a pressing issue.
During Carmel Mayor Sue Finkam's campaign, she was dismissive of the idea of connecting Carmel and Indianapolis via public transit. At a 2023 mayoral debate, Finkam said she heard from some community members who were concerned public transit would bring crime into Carmel.
That mirrors some of the concerns expressed by Carmel landowners during the construction of the Monon Trail decades ago, with one resident referring to it as "a freeway from the inner-city to our homes." (Today, property adjacent to the Monon Trail is highly sought after).
Finkam told IndyStar recently she believes the best solution for Carmel's public transit needs is to 'develop flexible, localized options, like door-to-door or on-demand transit, especially for seniors and those with mobility challenges," but would continue conversations with "the county and municipalities about how we could work better together."
In Westfield, Mayor Scott Willis said he was open to expanding public transportation within his city's borders as well, pointing to a hyperlocal trolley system around the Grand Park area as an option.
But Westfield officials are not currently discussing any broader public transportation systems, including a system that would connect to Indianapolis, the mayor said.
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'Do I feel like I need it (a broader public transportation system) in Westfield today? No,' Willis said. 'But you never know what the future may hold."
In Fishers, Mayor Scott Fadness has long contended that a bus system in the suburbs would be too expensive and underused to be practical, and predicted buses would be replaced by cheaper methods of public transport as technology advances.
"In five years, there will be modes of getting around that we haven't even considered today," Fadness said. But that was in 2017.
Since then, Fishers experimented with a driverless downtown shuttle service that was sparsely used in its six-month pilot period. Another plan for small shuttle buses by a company that would move into Launch Fishers and hire 160 workers never took hold.
Fadness declined to talk to IndyStar for this story.
In Noblesville, Mayor Chris Jensen and the City Council have shown no interest in public transportation. Jensen declined to talk to IndyStar but issued a statement that instead reinforced the city's commitment to roads and multi-use paths.
"The City of Noblesville continually evaluates the transportation needs in our community," Jensen said in a statement.
But for Walter Moore, and Central Indiana residents like him, the few public transit options connecting Indy to the suburbs are critical. Moore, 60, is blind and can no longer drive. He takes the Whitestown Connector shuttle bus home after his overnight shifts at an Amazon warehouse.
'That's what this whole area is, it's higher paying jobs,' Moore said of Whitestown. 'I've been out here working for years.'
Thibideau, of Invest Hamilton County, points out that public transportation is critical for keeping low or moderate-wage jobs in higher-turnover fields filled in Hamilton County in the coming years. But he understands there are a plethora of local budget concerns topping the priority lists of elected officials.
'There are changes in the property tax collections and there is the uncertainty about the macro economy," said Thibideau, who works closely with city leaders. 'Buses cost a lot and they take years to buy. We just don't know now how many would use it.'
Altman, the longtime transit advocate, who was first elected as a Hamilton County commissioner in 2003, is not optimistic anything will change.
'You've got to have the political will and I just don't see it right now,' Altman said. 'It's going to take a public investment for a system to come. Do you want to invest in more parking garages or public transit?'
Contact Jake Allen at [e-mail]. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @Jake_Allen19.