by Douglas McNaughton
Let’s talk about the Red Line, The Blue Line, The Green Line, The Purple Line, and any other line that Mayor Hogsett seems to need to use.
It seems that the city will be spending in total on this fiasco in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars. We are spending half a billion dollars to replace bus lines with…other bus lines. I have been told in my criticism that IndyGo currently does not go to all the neighborhoods it needs to, but we are replacing a bus line with an inflexible bus line. It will be less able to change to go to the neighborhoods it needs to.
We have real needs in this city that half a billion dollars would go a long way toward solving, and yet the Mayor is trying to convince us that this “shiny penny” project is what we need, not better roads or better police equipment or actual bicycle paths instead of painted lines of death on the roadway. I have no problem if the city wanted to convert the existing fleet of buses over to electric over time. I have no issue with wanting to improve some of our bus stops, and I certainly approve of the long-needed Julia Carson transportation center, but I believe that running buses, renting electric cars, and the actual filling of potholes in the city should be left to people who do it every day professionally.
Bus service should be as privatized as possible as this is already working in New York to service areas of the city that can no longer support public transportation, and the service is better. We already have at least 4 companies in the Indianapolis area that rent cars. Why is the city renting cars when we should simply be renting electric charge parking? Why does the city own equipment to fill potholes when there are private paving companies that do not take shortcuts, know their costing and will be accountable for bad repairs where IDPW is not? Why do we have police officers driving cars older than the ones I see parked at the local high schools? The city used to trade in police cars every 3 to 6 years and received good value for them as they were well maintained and sold well on the secondary market. That sound like a job for a negotiator like Rob Kendall.
We do not need a Mayor that knows how to fix potholes and drive buses. We do need a Mayor that is aware of the failure and has the courage to change course and make things better, not for legacy building, but for the good of the city. We need a Mayor who is innovative and looks to the future, not someone who is simply trying to make our city into the next Phoenix or Chicago. I have been to Chicago, so no thank you!
Douglas McNaughton is the Libertarian candidate for Mayor of Indianapolis.
