New Indy-Evansville bus line to open

Students may have a new way to commute back and forth from Indianapolis and beyond now that Indiana has received a $2-million federal grant to reopen previously abandoned bus lines.

“We are expecting over 44,000 riders on five different routes,” said Shelley Haney, an Indiana Department of Transportation spokesperson.

Miller Transportation, an Indianapolis- and Kentucky-based company that has been running charter buses for 25 years, was awarded the contract to operate the new routes.

“It’s still early, so we’re still working the schedule out, but right now a bus will hit Bloomington going south to Evansville at about 10 a.m. and then come through again going north to Indianapolis at about 10 p.m.,” said John Miller, owner and president of Miller Transportation.

Although the current time schedule might seem unattractive to students, Miller plans on adding routes to coincide with major student travel dates.

“We’ll run some additional services on Friday afternoons for students looking to go home to Indy and on Sunday afternoons we’ll have some services coming back to Bloomington,” Miller said. “We’ll also add some more routes during holiday seasons and other peak times.”

Miller is hoping to make the bus as accessible as possible for college students who are trying to save money.

“There’s going to be a student discount plan,” he said. “Students will be able to buy a pass on the Web site, and they can go anywhere for about $5.”

The new buses will also serve as connectors to other places, both inside Indiana and beyond.

“From Bloomington, you can catch a bus down to Evansville, and then over to Louisville or St. Louis, or north through Indianapolis to Columbus, South Bend and Muncie,” Miller said.

However, Miller warns that his buses will not be an airport service.

“The routes go straight to Indianapolis and don’t stop at the airport, so the best way to get from Bloomington to the airport is still the Bloomington Shuttle.”

Senior Ben Crawford, a senior at IU, is hopeful that the new bus line may be valuable in the future.

“I don’t have a car, and I live in Indy; so if I wanted to go home, I always had to be lucky and catch a ride with someone who was going, or have my parents come pick me up,” Crawford said. “A cheap bus line would really take a lot of the hassle out of the commute for me.”

With service scheduled to begin in January of 2010, students will have to wait a semester, but Miller said he believed it will be worth waiting.

“We’re still tweaking the schedule, but this should be a great option for IU students,” Miller said.