After Punting on Transit, Indiana Senate Mulls New Highway to Nowhere

For the uninformed, see the map above which traces a rough route miles from Indianapolis through what is primarily farmland. The road would intersect with small outlying towns which, in most cases, are far enough out as to not even be considered suburbs of the metro area.

Look at the map. The Indiana Commerce Connector (ICC) would travel from small Pendelton to Martinsville, which, except for Martinsville, already have interstate access. Do these small, outlying communities require 2 bisecting freeways to provide economic development opportunities? Is it worth expending huge sums of money and effort based upon presumptive arrival of business? Are the current metro area job centers not performing at a high enough level? Is further separation from the skilled labor in the region required to gain maximum economic benefit?

With the recent upending of HB1011 in committee last week by some of the same Senators cited as supporting the commerce connector, it really calls into question the motives behind the neutering of the transit bill.

As far as the public knows, there are no specific targets for the commerce connector except some vague references to warehousing and logistics benefiting from the road. If built, and logistics warehouses are the target workforce to attract, would we only be exasperating the issue we have now in places like Plainfield and Greenwood where large areas of warehouses with low wage jobs are located and which lack public transit to get workers to them? Is this not the same problem we are attempting to solve with the transit bill? The right to GET to work?