Partisan Labor Fight Threatens Indianapolis’s Game-Changing Transit Vision

Over the last few years, greater Indianapolis has been thinking big about transit. They developed a plan to double bus service and add new rail lines. They even identified funding (a 0.3 percent income tax hike) and built a viable political coalition around the vision -- which represented a dramatic shift away from the old car-centric approach that has dominated transportation planning there for decades.

All that work is now hanging in the balance of a partisan standoff unrelated to the actual transit plan. Network blog Urban Indy reported yesterday that an Indiana House committee had voted down the transit legislation 11-10 after a Republican lawmaker inserted language into the bill that would make the transit system "right-to-work."

The folks at Urban Indy, who have been advocating hard for this bill, are beside themselves. But a shred of hope remains, explains blogger extraordinaire Curt Ailes:

Elsewhere on the Network today: The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy announces that Kansas City is getting bike sharing. A Better Shreveport, morning the loss of a local cyclist, laments the city's total lack of bike infrastructure and reminds leaders that "transportation failings [are] a life or death issue." And Portland Transport explains that TriMet is considering "simplifying" its fare system, but the blogger is not convinced it will not raise equity issues.