Bus merger talks revved up in Northwest Indiana

Gary Public Transportation Corp.'s request for $4.1 million in support from the Northwest Indiana Regional Bus Authority is prompting the first serious talk of consolidation between the region's largest bus provider and the startup regional bus operator.

At a meeting of an RBA committee on Wednesday, GPTC general manager Daryl Lampkins pledged to discuss "an incremental transition to consolidation" with his agency's seven-member board of directors.

Lampkins' pledge came after he challenged the way the RBA had presented consolidation to the GPTC board in the past.

"I think from the RBA perspective, the RBA has to step up and start talking to GPTC about consolidation; not the other way around," Lampkins said.

RBA Executive Director Tim Brown challenged Lampkins' characterization of a presentation Brown made to the GPTC board more than one year ago, saying all he did was transmit the RBA's wish to do planning for consolidation.

Lampkins is an RBA board member, and he acknowledged that makes his role as go-between a complicated one.

It was only two months ago the RBA became an actual operator of buses, after more than a decade of existing as only a planning group and then a funding conduit for local bus agencies. At the beginning of the year, the RBA took over as the operator of Hammond Transit, under a two-year deal with the city.

Any consolidation between the RBA and GPTC may be complicated by the fact the GPTC board has passed a resolution that it should be the overall operator of any regional transit system.

The GPTC board has a meeting scheduled for 5 p.m. today, on the third floor of the Adam Benjamin Metro Center.

GPTC's request for $4.1 million will be processed by the RBA, but the actual funds will have to be granted by the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority. In 2008, the RDA approved a $1.5 million grant to enable GPTC to expand service on three regional bus routes that run in Gary and five other communities.

But at a meeting just this week, the RDA passed a resolution that it will cease funding mass transit operations by the end of 2011 to adhere more closely to its original mandate of funding capital projects.

GPTC in its current request wants the RDA's support of its regional routes to continue, with funds added to run another bus along U.S. 30 in Merrillville on Saturdays. A request for $2.4 million in support for the three regional routes accounts for the largest chunk of the overall $4.1 million request.

Also included in the overall $4.1 million request is $800,000 for operational funding and debt service, both of which are endangered by cuts in GPTC revenue due to Indiana's state-imposed property tax caps. GPTC also wants $400,000 for a program to spur business development along bus routes; $200,000 to modernize the Adam Benjamin Metro Center; and $312,500 to create a new regional route by linking its new "jobs and education" run along 15th Avenue with a Hammond route running along 169th Street.

All that spending will result in the federal government granting GPTC $7.6 million for the same projects, according to the bus agency's application.

RBA President Stephen Adik told Lampkins he thought it would be difficult to convince the RBA to appropriate that kind of money without the inclusion of some kind of transition plan for consolidation.