Late evening bus service would be reduced under a proposal presented to The Bloomington Transit Corporation’s board Tuesday night.
Board members listened to proposed changes to 12 routes at a meeting Tuesday.
In most cases the reduced service would be replaced with “Microtransit” service. Which allows users to call a bus with an “app”, similar to Uber and Lyft.
“It’s a concept that is growing in popularity, especially in times of day when ridership is less than what it would normally be such as nights and weekends,” says Bloomington Transit General Manager Lew May.
May says the transit corporation applied for a one year grant to fund Microtransit service.
The Bloomington Transit Corporation is funded by state and federal grants, along with a portion of local property taxes.
May says the bus system isn’t saving any money because of these changes, instead its reallocating busses to routes that have more demand.
“The whole premise of the study, the route optimization study, was for the costs to be budget neutral,” says May.
The transit corporation held a series of meetings last year to get input from the public on bus route realignment.
May says the board may engage in discussions with the city and Monroe County about extending service to Ivy Tech. But it’s too early to say if any new service to the school would be included in this round of route changes.
The proposed changes could be voted on in the February 18th board meeting; but they would not take effect until August of 2020.
