A Public Transit Mandate: Sunrise Indianapolis Imagines Public Transit For All
BY EMMA JANE LAPLANTE, public school teacher and Sunrise Indy organizer
In 1937, the Indiana General Assembly officially declared a new motto for the Hoosier state:
THE CROSSROADS OF AMERICA.
Every fourth grader in Indiana learns it in history class; every auto owner recognizes it from their license plate. And despite the nostalgic images this phrase may bring to mind of Industrial Age locomotives traversing the United States, the reality is that the phrase has always referred to highways. Indianapolis sits at the intersection of Interstates 65, 69, 70, and 74; Terre Haute brings together US 40 and US 41. In the early 20th century, this primacy of location for automobile transit made Indiana crucial to the American economy, a major caretaker of the key to the future.
But automobile transit is no longer the key to our future. Just, accessible, and carbon-neutral public transportation is.
If Hoosiers continue to fail to recognize this truth, we will abdicate the right to call our state “the crossroads of America.” To be a crossroads means to be where the action is, where the innovation is. And when it comes to transportation innovation, Indiana is several steps behind, not just nationally but also compared to our neighboring states. And when it comes to acting ethically and logically to preserve our collective future, Indiana is many steps behind.
Therefore, we the members of Sunrise Indianapolis present our 5-point vision for just, sustainable Public Transit for All Hoosiers by 2030.
1. By 2030, Indiana will be a state that recognizes public transit as a human right, and an essential component of the UNHCR-affirmed Freedom of Movement.
Just as the popular and ever-growing Medicare for All movement considers healthcare a basic human right, we will do the same for public transit, both for its potential to improve human health and potential and its necessity in the transition to a post-carbon economy.
Therefore, public transit systems in Indiana (buses as well as passenger rails) must be expanded, with ridership incentivized through the twin axes of accessibility and affordability. As the data accumulates regarding the impact of climate change on the health and wellbeing of all Americans, including in landlocked states, the moral imperative to invest in carbon-neutral public transit has never been clearer. Failure to do so will leave Hoosier workers behind our neighboring states in terms of access to hubs of commerce and employment. It will also continue to exacerbate existing health inequities (such as obesity and asthma rates, particularly childhood asthma) along socioeconomic and racial lines, contribute to our population’s decades-long decline in mental health (as worsened by long and compulsory commute times), and perpetuate the needless deaths of thousands of Hoosiers each year due to auto accidents. It is long past time that Indiana’s legislators free themselves from the undue influence of the auto industry and find the courage to prioritize their constituents’ physical, mental, and economic health.
2. By 2030, Indiana will implement high-quality, high-frequency transit service statewide with access points in every city of 10,000 residents or more,
with an initial focus on college towns and lower-socioeconomic regions that have traditionally been excluded from public transit options. These bus and train stations will be bustling, vibrant centers of commercial and public activity, rather than neglected spaces located far away from highly populated and trafficked areas (with heartfelt thanks to the folks at Madison Area Bus Advocates for their thinking and language on this, which we have borrowed). Buses and passenger trains will run regularly enough to meet the growing demands of communities as they transition away from a dependence on cars.
Furthermore, Sunrise Indianapolis recognizes that much of the infrastructure needed to meet such a lofty goal of transportation access already exists. Our state is already crisscrossed by rail lines, but they are mostly used for freight trains at present. By establishing a working relationship with freight railroads for infrastructure improvements, right-of-way acquisition, and coordination to provide frequent inter-city train service with prioritized passenger trains, we can begin this process with minimal need to expand the existing INDOT budget — although, with the new (Hoosier!) U.S. Secretary of Transportation nominee Pete Buttigieg, we hope to see significant federal reinvestments into state transportation budgets, anyway.
With all that said, we must also recognize the need for careful attention to be proactively paid to the potentially harmful economic effect new train stations could have on low-income residents of an area, and we must take any action necessary to mitigate any inflationary effect on rent prices and cost-of-living. While it is a moral imperative to invest in sustainable, desirable public transit, it is also our imperative to never do so at the expense of our most vulnerable community members. Indianapolis must design a model for public transit that leads the way nationally in avoiding the insidious processes of gentrification that far too often push out the most economically vulnerable residents of a neighborhood when attractive public transit is expanded to their region.
3. By 2030, Indiana will subsidize public transit ridership financially, and will boast well-designed systems that are fully accessible to ALL Hoosiers, regardless of socioeconomic status or (dis)ability.
Given that we know public transit ridership must be incentivized monetarily (rewarding transit riders for avoiding the carbon emissions of driving a car), the fare for a bus or passenger rail trip in or through Indiana will not exceed, and whenever possible will be less than, the total dollar amount of the required tolls an automobile driver would face while traveling the same route. This will assist Hoosiers not only economically but also medically, given that people who rely on public transit tend to face worse health outcomes due to a decreased ability to physically get themselves to preventative care and other doctor’s appointments.
Furthermore, we must design transit systems that can accommodate passengers with the full spectrum of mental and physical disabilities, so that every Hoosier who cannot drive a car can get around independently without compromising their safety or dignity.
Subsidized and physically accessible public transit should be the first commitment made on the road to following our fellow Midwesterners in Kansas City in committing to zero-fare public transit; as long as there are no tolls for public roads, entry fees at public parks, or user fees for myriad other public services, there should be no fare for bus or passenger rail trips (again, we are appreciatively borrowing policy and language here from Madison Area Bus Advocates). To recuperate funds that are typically collected as bus or train fares, the INDOT budget should reallocate sufficient funding away from highway expansion projects to support all necessary public transit initiatives.
4. By 2030, Indiana will activate structures for authentic community partnership (feedback, oversight, and collaboration) in all transit projects.
To ensure the needs and desires of the community are authentically met, the Indiana Department of Transportation must go beyond RSVP-only stakeholder meetings and surface-level public surveys in gathering representative input on its plans. Instead, the communities of actual or potential riders served by public transit systems in the state or municipal area MUST be included in the planning, budgeting, and decision-making processes for those same systems from the beginning, via either a truly open and publicly accessible planning process — OR, and preferably, the recruitment or election of community leaders to a planning committee.
5. By 2030, Indiana will include the workers of private corporations, not just their employers, in all decisions involved in transit-related public-private partnerships.
Indiana has been a right-to-work state since 2012, and it’s time we prioritize workers in all public-private contracts. Therefore, in the event of public-private partnerships between INDOT and private construction companies to expand or maintain public transit infrastructure, a condition of signing a contract with a private company must be a 10% representation of union spokespersons (or other worker representatives) on the private company’s board of directors, granting those worker representatives full and equal voting power in decisions related to the infrastructure plans. This will not only democratize the decision-making process, but will also ensure that the costs of public transit expansion are neither borne nor offset by exploiting construction workers or any other sector of the working class. To the contrary: public transit expansion must provide ample opportunities for the creation of good, clean union jobs, or else whatever noble ends it may bring about will be negated and corrupted by its exploitative means.
Within each of these points, there is a whole world of details to be debated; regressive legislation to be overturned; and policies to be discussed, lobbied for, and won. And while the road to any of these necessary victories may be long and difficult, Sunrise Indianapolis presents the 5 aforementioned demands as the non-negotiables, a program all progressive Hoosiers must commit to and strive toward as our North Star of equitable public transit.
There is not much time for Indiana to do what’s necessary for the health and security of Hoosier workers and families; to ensure our children’s future, and their ability to access and meaningfully participate in a just and sustainable post-carbon economy; to heed the leadership of Indigenous and youth (and Indigenous youth) activists in behaving as if we actually believe in the unambiguous findings of climate scientists.
But there is, still, time.
As we look toward emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, we must embrace the remainder of this decade as the last, and unprecedentedly opportune, change to be precise in our vision, and to immediately start building the transit systems that Hoosiers deserve. Only then will we earn back the right to call our state the Crossroads of America.
- Care about eco justice? Join your local hub of the Sunrise Movement to help us win a Green New Deal. If you live in Indiana, sign up for a conversation with a Sunrise Indy organizer using this form.
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