The U.S. Department of Transportation is gathering input in Indianapolis for a 30-year assessment of urban transit needs.
Indy is one of 11 stops on a tour by Transportation Department officials who are assembling the department's "Beyond Traffic 2045" report. The department says a growing population and an increasing number of cargo shipments mean the nation needs a long-term plan for increasing capacity, creating transit options for low-income Americans, and paying for it all.
U.S. Undersecretary of Transportation Peter Rogoff says people who moved into the suburbs when their commute into the city was 25 minutes are now finding their travel time has doubled.
“They are now moving back into the city, raising property values in the city and pushing people who are the most transit-dependent, sometimes, to the periphery of the city, where the transit is sometimes non-existent,” Rogoff says.
Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization Executive Director Sean Northrup told a forum at the University of Indianapolis the population boom in Indy's suburbs and the jobs that has created have produced a transportation mismatch, with people living in the suburbs but traveling to high-wage jobs downtown, while low-income residents in the central city don't have a way to get to jobs being created outside Marion County to keep up with the area’s growing population.
Northrup says the recession has created a generational double-whammy that increases transportation needs.
“It’s this inkling of a much larger, systemic problem of boomers wanting to retire, but not being able to because of hits that they’ve taken and then being followed up by a generation that has almost no liquidity when it comes to their ability to make large purchases, like home purchases,” Northrup says.