By Susan Brown, Times of Northwest Indiana
susan.brown@nwi.com
Is there a place for bus transit in Northwest Indiana?
The question may be polarizing today, but not so in eras that preceded the onset of the American love affair with the automobile and the region's pronounced struggle with the racial divide.
Gary native Lester Schoon, going on 97 and now of Lakes of the Four Seasons, recalls riding the ubiquitous streetcar, the precursor to the bus, which in turn had taken the place of myriad rail lines that had crisscrossed the region.
Transit officials say few know it's the removal of the rail lines that account for some of the area's wide thoroughfares, such as Crown Point's Main Street.
By the time he graduated from Emerson High School in 1930, the bus already was dominant for Schoon, though streetcars, having operated since 1902, weren't totally phased out until 1947.
"I took (the bus) five days a week," Schoon said. "We took it to work. We took it to school."
Streetcars also operated routinely in nearby Hammond and East Chicago as early as 1892, ending in 1940. From 1941 to 1973 buses ran all the way into downtown Chicago.
But it was Gary that became the hub of an interurban railway and also an interurban bus system.
Chicago-based rail enthusiast Bill Vandervoot says the history of buses in Northwest Indiana can be hard to find, but with the help of Chicago bus historian Andre Kristopans, he has nevertheless built an extensive body of information on his Web site, a source used by the Northwest Indiana Regional Bus Authority.
According to Vandervoot, the streetcar and bus system developed with U.S. Steel as the major focus, the main terminal being at the U.S. Steel main gate at Broadway, a short distance north of downtown and the South Shore train station.
As early as 1925, bus service, all originating in Gary, operated as far south as Cedar Lake and east to Valparaiso and Michigan City. Beginning in 1931, the bus transit companies, frequently changing ownership, also had active lines to Hammond, Whiting and East Chicago.
Yet by 1971, all bus service outside Gary was discontinued, leaving even Hammond and East Chicago in the lurch for a while.
The heyday of the bus era, generally considered to be from the 1940s through the 1960s, has the power to stir nostalgia.
In the 1940s in East Chicago, Natalie Vujovich, now a retired teacher, would catch the bus at Columbus Drive and Elm Street to head into downtown Hammond for her dance lessons.
At other times, Vujovich said she'd walk a couple of blocks to Main Street and catch the Gary bus to shop downtown or head for Miller Beach or transfer to another bus that took her into downtown Chicago.
"It was great," she said. "The buses came very frequently. We'd never wait more than 15 minutes."
Unlike families today, Vujovich said the family only had one car at the time. "My father used it for work so (the bus) was essential for us to get around," she said.
Fond memories aside, would she want to go back to those times?
"I'm so spoiled," she said chuckling. "I kind of like my car."
The American love of the automobile, driven for many years by General Motors, according to transit buffs, generally is accepted as a significant reason for the decline of mass transit in Northwest Indiana.
Lester Schoon's son, Indiana University Northwest professor Kenneth Schoon, a geologist by training but also an area historian, agrees.
To the younger Schoon, the automobile is the biggest obstacle to a resurgence of mass transit in the region.
"More people have automobiles, and each family has more than one automobile," he said. "It's very common for kids to drive to school and husbands and wives to have their own cars."
In earlier eras, Schoon said buses were necessary because of the material shortages resulting from the Great Depression and World War II. Even in the 1960s, Gary buses still came every five minutes and they didn't all go to the same place, he said.
Schoon said interest in mass transit is being renewed today because of high gas prices and traffic congestion, but it's hard to get taxpayers to support something they don't need personally.
Dennis Rittenmeyer, now president of Calumet College of St. Joseph and chairman of the Regional Bus Authority, grew up in Hobart taking the bus to work at his father's Glen Park gas station. He shares many of the same memories as Schoon and agrees about the role of cars in the decline of mass transit. "Lots of people have multiple cars today," he said. "I confess we have three."
Rittenmeyer, however, also points to the region's lingering racism.
"The '60s was a period of significant racial strife in Gary, which was the anchor in Northwest Indiana," he said.
Blacks were segregated in the city's central district, where the Little Calumet River was the southern boundary of the black community, he said. Merrillville was built up as the "white flight" community.
"Those are battles we're still fighting," he said. "Buses provide a way for people who don't look like me to come into my neighborhood. That's a significant component to the slowness of our ability (to regionalize bus service)," he said. "Part of it is racial. Part of it is our love affair with cars."
To return to the old days of mass transit also involves some practical issues, Rittenmeyer said.
"It isn't easy or it would have been done a long time ago," he said. "Service has to be good enough to meet transportation needs as well as to attract riders who have the freedom or the desire to make that choice."