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Wednesday, February 10, 2010
New Regional Transportation Plans
As many of you are already aware, the Central Indiana Transit Task Force today released a comprehensive plan to guide transportation planning in the Indy Metro area. Plans for commuter rail lines to Fishers and Greenwood and a light rail line along Washington St. are getting the lion's share of media attention, but everything from expressways to bike lanes is covered. More information on the plans can be found at the new Indy Connect webpage. They did a particularly nice job with the promotional video, so here it is again:
Curt over at Huston Street Racing was able to attend the press gathering for the event and will no doubt have an update for us at some point.
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4 comments:
I love the plan. The light rail line is laid out right where it should be - airport to downtown to east side, and is not over ambitious. The one thing it lacks is a 'destination' on the east side, which isn't a deal breaker, but having something would really improve ridership and increase capture. Light rail, I believe, has to be coupled with zoning changes to allow greater densification along the route. This, with some sort of TIF for that area, would also help decrease some of the subsidies required.
The commuter rail to Fishers is long overdue. Nashville proved that one can be built on the cheap ($1.3m/mile for the Music City Star - dirt cheap in the world of transportation), and demand is there.
And the buses - I used to ride an express bus in Salt Lake City and loved it. If the buses are clean and fast they should work. I'd also like to see short buses on some routes, I'm not sure that was in the proposal.
Thanks for the comment. After reading Peter Christensen's piece on the Urbanophile, I was actually thinking the same thing about the lack of a destination on the eastside. No doubt it will capture some commuter traffic from eastside residents, but there will be no reciprocal traffic. If they run it out as far as Washington Square Mall, they could potentially provide a revitalizing boost to that area.
There are lots of underutilized industrial sites south of Washington between downtown and Sherman (all served by rail), and then there's "big box world" east of Shadeland pretty much all the way out to Washington Square. I think there could be some outbound commuting.
Planning task force is most often formed when the organization requires addressing special circumstances. It is more preferable and efficient than maintaining a different planning staff or department.
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