Building a bus system that works – with Jerome Horne
Jerome Horne of IndyGo on what it takes to build an effective public transit system on a limited budget—and in a city designed entirely around the car.
Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (dts.podtrac.com) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.
Show Notes
In this episode, we speak with Jerome Horne, ridership experience specialist for IndyGo, about Indianapolis's ongoing transit transformation and some of the key elements in building a reliable and effective bus system. Indianapolis makes a great case study for car-dependent cities looking to overhaul under-performing transit systems or even start from scratch.
Some of the topics we cover in this episode include:
- Reasons to prioritize the bus over the train
- The ridership vs. coverage dilemma
- Why frequency means freedom
- Getting the details right: bus stop spacing, amenities, and schedules
- Why grids are better than hub-and-spoke systems
- How to do public engagement that actually reaches the people who use (or would use) transit (and how Indianapolis did it)
- Why it matters who you send to public meetings in different neighborhoods
- How this transit makeover got funded (and why it succeeded where other cities' transit measures failed)
- The Red Line, Indy's first BRT (bus rapid transit) line that launched in September 2019: what has gone well and what hasn't
- Challenges so far, relating to: running the US's first-ever all-electric BRT fleet, introducing a new fare system, and finding enough drivers to staff the expanded system
- Should transit be free to use?
- IndyGo's new CEO, transit agency culture, and why it's important for transit decision-makers to use they system they run
- Transit-related book recommendations!
Find Jerome on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Check out the incredible International Micro Museum of Transit, curated entirely by Jerome. And if you're up to it, take a peek inside New Urbanist Memes for Transit-Oriented Teens (you don't have to be a teen to join).
*Note: We had some issues with the audio files on this episode. You might notice the occasional brief skipping. :( We think it's still very listenable, but we apologize for the less-than-ideal sound on this one!
--
The Go Cultivate! podcast is a project of Verdunity. Find more about this and other episodes (and our blog) at verdunity.com/go-cultivate.
You can also find us on social media. Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn
And if you haven't yet, sign up for our weekly email digest. It's not lame! (Each week we collectively curate a list of the things we read that caught our attention. Then we hand-package your copy, spank a first-class stamp on that baby, and drop it right in your email inbox.) Sign up here!
Join us (and your peers!) in the Community Cultivators Network.
--
(Music in this episode is from No Money & Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers.)