Commuter Rail Linking Muncie & Indy

MUNCIE -- Support is developing for a commuter rail system connecting Muncie to Indianapolis.

"We are in the consensus-building phase, building a critical mass of people who believe this is important and will support and help champion it," said state Rep. Terri Austin, D-Anderson.

The Indiana Department of Transportation tentatively has selected San Francisco-based URS -- one of the largest engineering design firms worldwide -- to study the feasibility of developing a commuter rail system connecting Muncie to Bloomington, with stops in Anderson, Noblesville, Fishers and Indianapolis.

The report is due in a little less than a year: Aug. 31, 2008.

Ball State University and Delaware County commissioners are among those backing the proposal.

"It's a good idea, and we don't want it to lose momentum," Commissioner John Brooke said recently, after commissioners adopted a resolution finding that a commuter rail line between Muncie and Indianapolis would "benefit the citizens of Delaware County by providing an economical, energy-saving, traffic-reducing method of transportation to and from Indianapolis."

The study was required by Senate Bill 105, which also established the Joint Study Committee on Mass Transit and Transportation Alternatives, of which Austin is co-chair. The committee met for the first time last week.

"With the price of gas and the congestion on Interstate 69, a lot of people are saying this is a no-brainer," Austin said.

"I-69 has gotten progressively more congested and dangerous. We are stretching this transportation route to its very limit, and safety is an issue."

Mass transit is also important to the region's economic future, Austin said. While she declined to predict when a commuter rail system might be built in the I-69 corridor, Austin did predict that the lack of such a system "is going to be a detriment to us in 15 years or so."

State Sen. Sue Errington, D-Muncie, keeps her fingers crossed when commuting on I-69 in the vicinity of the Fishers exit, fearing "some kind of accident or other tie-up that's going to make me late or take me longer to get home."

It seems to her there are more trucks traveling the highway than there used to be.

"With all of our concerns about foreign oil and our dependence on it, I think a commuter rail is a really good idea," Errington said.

According to Austin and Errington, commuter-rail supporters at Ball State include Stephen Kendall, a professor of architecture.

"With development happening so fast, the pressure on I-69 is going to be really bad," Kendall said. "If you build more lanes on the highway, they will fill up as fast as you add the lanes. We need alternatives, and the Legislature had the wisdom to put that into a bill. The mass transit committee they created is a permanent committee, meaning the Legislature took it seriously."

BSU president Jo Ann Gora "is very enthusiastic about being involved in creating a proper climate for discourse" on the issue, Kendall said.

'Hidden cost of driving'

Douglas Kelbaugh, dean of the school of architecture at the University of Michigan, spoke at Ball State last week on transit-oriented development.

"Driving has some hidden costs," Kelbaugh said. "Automobility is more expensive than you realize when you add up all the other costs, not just the cost of insurance, gasoline and buying the car. The interstate highway system is the single-biggest public works project in the history of the world."

In addition, he noted that more than 42,000 people died in car crashes in the United States last year. More than 3 million others were injured. Other hidden costs of Automobility -- and the lack of walkable communities -- include obesity, diabetes and hours wasted in traffic jams, he said.

Also speaking at Ball State this fall will be former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening, who created the Smart Growth Leadership Institute, and Marilee Utter of Citiventure Associates in Denver. Her firm specializes in transit-oriented developments.

During the next 40 years, the Indianapolis-Muncie corridor is most likely to become completely urban, professor John Ottensmann told The Star Press during an interview in 2002. A professor at the Center for Urban Policy and the Environment at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Ottensmann also studied corridors leading from Indianapolis to Columbus, Bloomington, Terre Haute, Lafayette and Kokomo.

Ottensman created a computer model called LUCI (Land Use in Central Indiana) to predict future development patterns using satellite images, employment data and other information.

"The I-69 corridor from Indianapolis to Muncie has been one of the most rapidly growing areas in central Indiana and, indeed, the entire state of Indiana, both in terms of population and employment growth," Ottensmann said in a recent interview. "Results from the LUCI 2 simulation model suggest that this high level of growth can be expected to continue, resulting in very substantial increases in both population and employment in the corridor going forward into the future."

'Catalyst for jobs'

Ball State's Land Design Institute and its Community Based Projects are getting ready to launch a "Green Line Initiative" that will look at the mass transit issue.

The discussion needs to be elevated from traffic mitigation and improvement of air quality to what transit-oriented development can do to improve the economy, said Scott Truex, associate professor of urban planning at Ball State.

"We see across the country that transit centers become a major catalyst for corporation location and economic development," said Truex.

He says drivers on I-69 are becoming "crazier and crazier."

"I'd much prefer sitting on a train reading (The Star Press) on my way to Indianapolis and having a great coffee from Alliance World Coffee and checking my e-mails than fighting traffic," Truex said.

Contact senior reporter Seth Slabaugh at 213-5834.