Now that we are talking about rail transit all the people in Hamilton County think they should get it.
Huh?

1. Auto congestion – many people seem to support or not support the light rail project on the basis of what perceived difference it will make to people who continue driving cars. I think proponents really are overselling the potential for congestion reduction in the suburbs. However, I haven’t seen many people talking about the potential for congestion reduction downtown. The system could make a very real impact here. Even if only a couple thousand downtown employees used it daily, think the of difference that would make on downtown congestion and parking. In the longer term with more lines, this could be one of the biggest impacts rail transit could make, reducing auto congestion and car parking downtown.

2. Pollution – I have seen a lot of debate on whether light rail would have environmental benefits by substituting presumably more efficient transit trips for those in cars. There has been some discussion around diesel vs. electric trains and their relative merits. Pollution should be categorized into local and global impacts. For example, DMUs will emit particulate emissions perhaps at a greater rate than cars, but probably less CO2 per person. Electric trains would have zero local emissions from the vehicle but still are driven by coal-fired powerplants with global warming and regional pollution potential.

3. Mobility – not a lot of people are talking about the potential for increased mobility. This is another big benefit of light rail transit with an independent right-of-way. Travel times to places by transit are independent of what is happening on the roads, thus helping to maintain or increase mobility for people served by the line. Don’t forget that not everyone can drive. Transit helps improve the mobility for the young, old, poor and disabled, although these benefits are not specific to light rail.

4. Cost – this debate seems to be framed in terms of how it directly affects the individual. People who perceive they can save gas money by switching to transit, others believe they will be paying higher taxes for something they won’t use. There is also a vocal group of people who believe the whole venture is fine as long as it can be funded by private investment. Unfortunately the only number I have seen is the capital cost figure of $160MM. We really need more info on operational costs to determine how good of an investment this is in the long-term.

5. Land use – many people like light rail because they like transit oriented developments or believe it will support a more vibrant downtown. These could be benefits of light rail but will depend largely on coordinated efforts by a number of agencies.

Obviously, those cities get it when it comes to mass transit, why are Indy;s residents so obtuse and out-of-touch when it comes to the future of public transportation?

If by building a commuter rail line Indy is “rewarding” sprawl, then why no opposition to spending hundreds of millions of dollars improving the road infrastructure in the NE corridor?

The problem is that for anyone that isn’t a guaranteed job magnet, taxing people for coming into your jurisdiction to work only encourages the jobs to go elsewhere. In fact, we’ve already seen the suburbanization of the job base. Over 50% of the proposed office space construction in the metro area is in Carmel.

I believe a local option sales tax is the most common way to finance transit, at least operations. A regional tax might be viable if it involved funding to keep buses running to Greenwood, start them running to Hendricks County, etc. with a commitment to future rail line extension.

Interesting stat: 53,000 Hamilton County commuters to Marion County.

My economist mind naturally ran to numbers. Let’s (conservatively?) assume $50K average wage per job for those 53,000 people. My calculator says that’s $2.65billion in wages.

I do not know the exact county tax funding formula used by the state. One used to pay the higher rate (home county vs. work county), but how that was parceled out between the two counties, I don’t know. I assume the “work county” got something but not all.

Imagine that Marion County got to keep 100% of its 1.65% wage tax on all those wages. That’s more than $43 million a year in tax revenue.

So my economist minde imagined this, too: what if our TIF district law in Indiana included sales taxes and wage taxes? Or what if a separate “Transit TIF” (TTIF) district were created to take advantage of transit-oriented development?

That might be the “innovative funding tool” needed to pay for the trains, streetcars, and upgraded bus system that we need here.

First policymaker to publicize this idea gets the “Thundermutt Urban Economics Award”.

I like the idea of financing (or helping to finance) this thing by creating zones around the stations and devoting any increases in property tax revenue (due to increases in the value of surrounding properties) to the system that helped create the added value. That strikes me as a much more fair way of financing the project than a regional tax of the sort used to pay for the football stadium.