IndyGo's riders with disabilities, low incomes protest 57% fare hike as final vote nears

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Diagnosed with the immune system disorder multiple sclerosis a decade ago, Ryan Malone uses an IndyGo program for people with disabilities to schedule a private cab to and from work every weekday. Before his diagnosis, he relied on a typical bus for his daily commute because he's legally blind.
"I use the paratransit services really for the MS more than the vision, just because with MS, you really need to have a steady, predictable environment," Malone said, referring to the bus system's paratransit program, IndyGo Access.
His symptoms, mainly neuropathy that makes him lose feeling in his hands, legs and feet, "get worse if (I) get too hot or too cold or even too stressed."
If IndyGo passes a 57% fare increase next month for all routes, Malone will be among the riders facing the largest new costs when the policy takes effect in January 2026. He expects to pay roughly $80 more a month for IndyGo Access services — similar to adding a new utility bill to his monthly budget.
Under the new policy, the typical bus fare would increase from $1.75 to $2.75 per trip, while the starting IndyGo Access fare paid by riders like Malone would rise from $3.50 to $5.50 per trip. The price is higher for paratransit service, which picks up people from the door of their home and drops them off at their destination, because it costs more per rider than a fixed-route bus, IndyGo says.
While Malone earns a good wage in his role at the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, he worries about other riders with disabilities who are on fixed incomes. Their struggle to make ends meet is similar to that of the typical IndyGo rider, who has no car, lives in a household earning less than $25,000 a year, and rides IndyGo to and from work every weekday, according to a 2022 rider survey.
'You're talking about people that by and large just don't have as many options financially or practically," Malone said. "They don't have a lot of options as far as how they get places and especially what they can afford."
With ridership still down at three-quarters of pre-pandemic levels, IndyGo officials say they need to increase fares for the first time since 2009 to prevent service reductions or deferred upgrades to buses and facilities. The rising costs of fuel, labor and construction are outpacing the old fares.
But more than a dozen riders who spoke with IndyStar and in IndyGo public meetings throughout June said they're frustrated by the attempt to increase fares all at once after a 16-year freeze.
If the IndyGo board of directors passes the policy in an Aug. 21 vote, the new standard fare of $2.75 would be higher than those in comparable Midwestern cities like Columbus, Detroit, Nashville and even Chicago, where a single bus ride costs $2.25 (or $2.50 with cash).
To riders like Kimberly Eskridge who are struggling to get by, the 57% fare hike seems "outrageous."
Eskridge, 56, sat with a suitcase and bags full of laundry at the Julia Carson Transit Center on a recent weekday morning. She had ridden to a laundromat on the south side before heading downtown to meet her husband at a storage unit where she keeps some of her belongings.
She and her husband currently earn little to no income and have no vehicle, she said. They're staying with someone they know on the south side because they can't afford their own place.
"We can barely afford to ride the bus as it is," Eskridge said. "And then you want to raise it a whole dollar? You can't do it a quarter at a time or something?"
IndyGo officials say that simple math brought them to the proposed 57% increase: $1.75 in January 2009 — the last year in which fares increased — is equal to about $2.61 today, adjusting for inflation. They rounded up to $2.75.
In the 2000s, IndyGo increased fares by 25 cents every few years, going from $1.00 for a fixed-route trip at the start of the decade to $1.75 by the end.
It's not clear why previous leaders abandoned that strategy during the 2010s, Chief Public Affairs Officer Carrie Black told IndyStar. Black suggested they were more focused on planning major initiatives like the 2016 Marion County Transit Plan, for which transit advocates convinced voters to approve a new 0.25% income tax to fund the creation of three new bus rapid transit lines.
Purple Line: IndyGo's Purple Line jumps to No. 1 in monthly ridership as Red Line, other bus routes falter
While expenses have kept rising, IndyGo has dealt with dwindling ridership and shrinking fare revenue in the years following a 23-year high of 10.2 million trips in 2014 — a slow downward trend that accelerated rapidly once the pandemic hit.
Money from paying passengers in 2014 hit $11.6 million. By 2024, when ridership was down by about three million trips, fare revenues were cut in half to about $6 million. To make up the difference, a growing portion of IndyGo's costs have been paid for with local property and income taxes, state sales taxes and federal grants.
Facing funding shortfalls down the road, IndyGo leaders are choosing to rip off the Band-Aid now.
"We cannot continue to operate (this way)," IndyGo Executive Director Jennifer Pyrz said during a June meeting. "Fuel prices are going up. We've got a new collective bargaining agreement that means that our labor costs are up, and we want to make sure that we can provide fair wages to our frontline workers. The cost of construction is up."
IndyGo riders like 19-year-old Desirae Biddle, who was taking the bus to her new job at Penn Station on a recent July morning, are well aware that the cost of everything seems to be rising.
They just don't want a public service known for its affordability to follow that trend.
"Ubers and Lyfts, they cost so much. That's why I ride the bus," Biddle said, adding that it takes her an hour and a half on two buses to get to work using IndyGo. "It's just so hard to get around."
IndyGo's main solution to save frequent riders money is a fare-capping program, introduced in 2019 with the MyKey fare system, that puts daily and weekly limits on how much a rider has to pay.
But those price caps would also increase under the new proposal, which would bump up the daily limit from $4 to $6 and the weekly limit from $15.75 to $24.75.
And riders have been slow to make use of the MyKey system, with more than half choosing to pay with cash and missing out on savings, according to IndyGo data. Six years after MyKey's implementation, only one in five IndyGo riders uses the MyKey tap card or the mobile app for rides.
Throughout public meetings in June, IndyGo leaders emphasized that paying with cash or coins while boarding is the most expensive way to ride the bus. IndyGo aims to push more people toward MyKey by educating them on the potential cost savings and phasing out other common payment alternatives like the 31-day pass, Black said.
IndyGo has also faced criticism about missing out on revenue when riders purposely skip or neglect to pay the fares for the Red Line and the Purple Line, its most popular routes which are easy to board without paying.
IndyGo now checks thousands of riders' fares a month. Among roughly 50,000 tickets checked through May, riders hadn't paid about 10% of the time, a June report shows.
Pyrz said IndyGo would be seeking a price increase even if fare evasion weren't an issue.
"Even if everybody paid 100% of the fare all the time," Pyrz said, "we would still be having this conversation."
Email IndyStar Reporter Jordan Smith at [e-mail]. Follow him on X: @jordantsmith09
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyGo to vote in August on 57% fare hike for bus riders