INDIANAPOLIS - With construction of the Interstate 69 extension through Southwestern Indiana scheduled to start later this year, a few state legislators are calling on the Daniels administration to make mass transit such as regional bus systems or even light rail a part of Indiana's transportation package.
"Everybody's doing mass transit but Indiana," state Rep. Terri Austin, D-Anderson, said. "We're very much behind (other states), which is going to create a huge economic development issue for us in the years ahead."
This year, lawmakers are focused on rushing property tax relief to Hoosiers before the Legislature's session ends March 14, so mass transit hasn't drawn much of their attention.
For their part, Indiana Department of Transportation officials say mass transit projects on a state level are impractical now because of the expense relative to demand, and the funding isn't available.
Austin, who chairs the House Roads and Transportation Committee, and Sen. Tom Wyss, who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, were in the tussles over funding mechanisms for extending I-69 from Evansville to Indianapolis.
Wyss, R-Fort Wayne, has championed highway projects in recent years, but he is not a supporter of the state actively seeking to expand mass transit, which in Indiana typically means buses.
Last summer, Austin and Wyss cochaired a legislative study committee that investigated mass transit. Based on those hours of hearings, Austin introduced two mass transit bills in the Legislature this year. House Bill 1245 already passed a committee and awaits a vote of the full House. That bill would allow local governments to create mass transit districts, in which additional taxes could be collected to develop mass transit.
Wyss said he could support a plan that allows local governments, with help from INDOT, to plan and pay for their own mass-transit systems. But on a state level, "no bill of taxation is going to come out of this session" for mass transit, he said.
Austin said this session she won't pursue the other bill she introduced, House Bill 1247. It would have raised the state sales tax from 6 percent to 6.4 percent and the state gasoline tax from 18 to 25 cents per gallon to fund mass transit development. That idea, Wyss said, certainly would not gain any traction. "I'm surprised it was even introduced," he said.
Austin's bills come as House Democrats attempt to boost state funding by $350 million for the South Shore Line, a long-running commuter train from South Bend to Chicago.
In other mass-transit projects, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization is studying a regional commuter route - either bus or light rail - between Marion County and the surrounding counties. That organization's analysis suggested an increase of 4 cents per gallon in the gasoline tax or a hike of 0.25 percent to the sales tax solely for the regions affected as means of funding such a project.
Wyss contended only Marion County and the surrounding counties should have to pay for it. "It takes local government to convince the people, and to show (people) the need and the benefits," said Wyss.
But Sen. Vaneta Becker, R-Evansville, who served on the summer study committee with Austin and Wyss, disagrees that support for mass transit can be locally generated.
"I don't think that the regions can do it on their own," Becker said. "You won't see it happen at a local level. It's got to be initiated by the state."
Discussions of mass transit in Evansville mostly involve ideas to expand the city's municipal bus service to surrounding communities.
Becker said she left the summer study convinced that mass transit, as well as highways, needs to be part of state transportation planning. "We have more money for highway funding now than we've ever had in the history of the state," she said, citing the infusion of Major Moves funding for road construction. "And if the governor and INDOT are not willing to provide the leadership necessary, (mass transit) is just unlikely to happen," Becker said.
Meanwhile, INDOT says its priority is highway projects such as the I-69 extension.
"That is a direct economic engine," INDOT communications director Andy Dietrick said of the 10-year road plan funded by Major Moves. "(Mass) transit does have a place in that. But we need to have some perspective in what the Major Moves plan is doing for the state," relative to the more limited economic development expanded mass-transit systems could spur, Dietrick said.