Mass Transit

According to Tully, plenty of people want to see mass transit in the city. I don’t disagree that a lot of people want to see Indianapolis develop a great mass transit system. I just don’t think Indianapolis can support one – whether its more busses, light rails, trains or flying cars. Metro Indianapolis, however, probably could.

Indy’s transit woes come from our spread out, un-dense city. This is because the city is surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. Space and land is cheap, so why should or would someone build a house for $200,000 in Marion County when they can get the same thing for $150,000 in Hamilton County and enjoy a lot more peace and quiet?

My proposal: developing the Indianapolis Regional Metropolitan Area, which would include Marion, Hamilton, Hancock, Shelby, Johnson, Morgan, Hendricks and Boone Counties. My pie-in-the-sky idea would be to merge all of these areas into a sort of super-city with a much larger tax base, better equity in schools and highway construction and shared interest. County Councils in those counties should elect a single county executive to serve on the expanded City-County Council and a plan to phase out local county councils should be put into place. Those people can then go on to serve in the larger Metro-Council as a sort of “mini legislature”. People in the suburbs have to get over their fear of the “big city” and realize they wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for that city.

With this combined area, taxes could be collected at similar rates that pour into a single pot to better the interests of this region. Those taxes can be used to fund schools, roads, cleanup, etc., but also a better mass transit system. When everyone pays into the system, everyone is more involved in the system, as it should be.

Start with increasing bus service per IndyConnect’s recommendations and expand on as necessary. Mass transit in Indianapolis is not a problem. The problem, as can be witnessed by any traffic report on a weekday, is always suburbanites on I-69, I-70 and I-65 coming from Fishers, Avon, Plainfield, Lebanon and Greenwood.

Parks and Green Space

According to Tully’s article, a number of people want to see green space improved and increased. This is kind of a weird request since most people would come to our city and assume the whole thing is “empty green space” compared to most other cities, but it’s worth thinking about.

My proposal: charter parks. They’re plenty of plots of empty earth in Marion County. I say we open the door to a sort of public-private system of parks. I see no reason why, say, Eli Lilly wouldn’t be interested in developing a park with recreational facilities and open space as a sort of benefit to their employees. It could be used by Lilly during the day and open to the public in the early mornings, evenings and weekends and holidays. Likewise with spaces on IUPUI’s campus which are, for all practical matters, completely closed to the public. Let the city furnish a lifeguard or two for the pool and let the public use it for free in the evenings. The pool’s always on, the lights are always on and it’s always ready-to-be-used. It’s just that IU, a public school, won’t allow it.

Crime

The other big to-do seems to be crime. Crime is, evidently, a natural part of living in a city. To be blunt, this is a very complex issue that raises too many issues to be solved with any one tactic.

My proposal: never mind extra police and security. Unless you can station an office at every street corner in the city, the very nature of police work is a reactionary after-the-fact service.

Instead, it’s going to take years of proper education, civility and cultural changes to get to a safe city and even then, I don’t think it can be achieved. Some people are just bad apples for one reason or another.

So how do you kind of scoop them up to alleviate some of the problems now? My suggestion would be hostels. Not a homeless shelter, but hostels. Places for people to go and live for cheap rates or where they can work in exchange for a place to live. Whether they’re publicly-owned or private, I don’t know. I prefer public-private partnerships when they can be done fairly, well and with the city’s best interests at heart.

When you realize that most living quarters fall into two categories: free or not-at-all-cheap, you leave a lot of gray area. A mother and child can’t live in a shelter, they can’t always afford an apartment and certainly not a house. Rent in this city is, at best, $400 a month if you want to live in near squaller conditions. $550+ gets you someplace at least a little attractive and that still includes the scant few studio apartments in town.

Dorm-like hostels could allow people to live comfortably, like in an apartment, for around $250 or $250 a month without the high costs associated with the rent as more people can fill a given area. If you build the structure with those needs in mind, you can build a building that’s cost-effective and easy to maintain.

It doesn’t have to be extravagant. In fact, I’d argue it shouldn’t be so as to encourage people to save up and move on to someplace better. That could keep a lot of slightly disadvantaged people from spending time on the streets or begging for money. It would also give police another tool besides jail to help people stay out of trouble.

The Star has a take on it:

That’s because the two-year budget bill moving through the General Assembly would cut state support for mass transit by almost 18 percent. IndyGo would have to absorb an $8 million hit, which amounts to about one-sixth of its budget.

Interestingly, the debate over funding for public transit isn’t between free spenders and budget hawks. In his budget proposal this year, Gov. Mitch Daniels, hardly a profligate spender, kept transit spending at its current level, despite the financial pressures facing state government.

Urban Indy has a piece on how INDOT doesn’t even bother holding mass-transit meetings in Indianapolis. Instead, they hold them in obscure places that would never need it anyway:

It’s disheartening to think that this is the best we can do in this state. As long as INDOT is the driver for transportation planning in the state, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that believers in diverse modes of travel and urban living in Indiana will be like Cubs fans: wait until next year.

This isn’t hard. It’s really not. First, does anyone actually realize there’s a lot of Indiana out there outside of Indianapolis? People in the other 84 out of 92 counties don’t give a crap what Indianapolis wants. They got pissed when Gov. Daniels sold “their” toll road and used it to pay for things like I-465 improvements, I-69 upgrades and I-70 on the east side. The rest of the state doesn’t like Indianapolis so it’s no surprise that their legislators don’t give two rips about IndyGo. If Indy wants it, Indy has to pay for it.

Second, INDOT builds roads because that’s what we’ve always liked. We’re “the crossroads of America” for heaven’s sake, not “The crossroads of monorail lines.” People in Indiana, and most of America, like cars. People like being in control of their own car, their own radio station, they can smoke ‘em if they’ve got ‘em and all they want is a clear slab of pavement in front of them to use it on. Count me in that bunch: I like driving vs. public transit any day. The few times I’ve been on public transit around the world I hated it. It smells crappy, it looks crappy, it’s late and the people are anything but safe to be around at times. If I get in my car, barring a wreck, so long as I’m out the door on-time I’ll get there on-time.

IndyGo needs money to operate and it needs riders. You’d think that getting more riders helps, but it doesn’t. More riders are fine, but riders barely make a dent in their budget. An easy solution here is to paint the buses somethin’ pretty and charge people a fair rate for getting across town. Current fares are at about a $1.50; raise it to $3 or $4 and this problem becomes much more manageable. That’s still cheaper than owning a car.

“But Justin, people can’t afford $3 fares.” Well, I’m sorry. The rest of the state clearly isn’t of a mind to support people getting to work in Indianapolis. It’s either higher fares or no bus at all. A better solution might be to do a sliding scale based on income and where you’re going. Going to work you pay one rate, going to the stadium, it’s another.

What can’t work is charging so little, making so little and doing so little. This isn’t hard to fix, but IndyGo’s hands are tied because it can’t just raise rates when it needs to. Hell, they can’t even hang up a sign without approval.

Here in Indiana, there were two things to be done this year: setting precinct districts based on new census data and setting a new two-year budget. Everything else is just fluff around the edges. The whole session has been dominated by right-to-work and union bills, education bills, abortion bills and gay marriage bills and other useless things like cell phone usage while driving legislation.

The sad part is that none of that really needed to happen. There wasn’t some huge problem with right-to-work policies in the state. Education is crappy today and will probably be just as crappy tomorrow because the input is crap. Crap in, crap out. The abortion and gay marriage bills won’t change anything. It’ll still be just as difficult to get an abortion and just as illegal to get married in this state. Cell phone use while driving is still just as dumb and unenforceable as ever.

“Government small enough to drown in the bathtub” is supposed to mean government large enough only to do the necessities and leave everyone else alone. Sadly, it’s small enough now to sit in the tub with you and tell you what you can and can’t do.

They’re just beating around the edges and all the same debates and useless rhetoric are going on in other states like Colorado, Kentucky and Ohio. And those were just three random states I looked up in Google News. That’s all they’ve done.

Which leads me to believe we don’t need a full-time legislature anymore. Or a full-time Congress. Granted, Congress has matters of Libya, Iraq, etc. to contend with, but they’re stuck in more peaceful gridlock in Washington right now. For states, we’ve covered the basics: don’t kill people, don’t rape people, don’t steal from people and don’t forget to pay your taxes.

My proposal: the legislature gets one month from here on to handle the important matters, like district allocation, budgets, etc. And, if a special issue crops up that warrants attention, like a disaster or a strike or some such, the Governor can call a session to handle that and then we can all go home. Otherwise, we’re just adding laws on top of laws on top of laws just because there’s nothing else better to do.

A bill that passes this year will take many years to pass into the Constitution. It has to be approved again by a second consecutively-elected body of the House and Senate, then the Governor. After that, it goes on to the ballot in the next closest general election to be voted on by the citizens of Indiana.

You can learn more about the bill, the members on the committee and send a generic form-letter against the measure over at the Equality Federation, a Libertarian-friendly organization I might add. Libertarian philosophy on the matter is simple: the government shouldn’t be regulating any kind of marriage. Instead, it should only offer civil unions for legal protection of assets and securities in a relationship. “Marriage” is a religious affair and has no business in the government’s bureaucracy.

I think this bill will pass this year, and likely again in the next body of the House and Senate (I don’t see Indiana Democrats making that big of a comeback that soon). By then, I expect the state’s attitudes on gays and lesbians to change enough that it won’t matter. Or, more likely, the Federal government will throw their cock into this fight and it’ll be a moot point.

However, if an amendment is passed into the Constitution, mark my words: I will immediately put my house on the market and take my education, my business, my spending, my income and property taxes and my charitable works out of this state.

Arkansas wants to ban headphones:

State lawmakers have proposed a bill that would ban headphones in both ears near streets.

Tim Poole says he’s seen the worst of what could happen while running with headphones.

Poole says, “Well a friend of mine she was running in her neighborhood and had her headphones on and she was hit from behind.”

He’s introducing a bill that would ban pedestrians from wearing headphones in both ears while close to a street, intersection, or highway.

Runner Charlie Moore says pedestrians should use their own judgment.

People using their own judgement!? GASP!

And then there’s this nifty new tax fee:

INDIANAPOLIS (WFIE) – A bill has been proposed that would have consumers paying .10 a bag for grocery bags.

If passed, the bill, introduced by northern Indiana State Representative Shelly VanDenburgh, would act as a type of tax.

According to the bill, 25% of the funds collected would go to the Indiana economic development corporation for the green industries fund, the other 75% would go to schools.

If passed, retailers would be required to have reusable bags for sale.

A fee is a tax, stop trying to make it sound different. And you know it’s a tax because there isn’t a human being in America that doesn’t use a plastic bag at some point or another. You go to the Dollar Store and buy a loaf  of bread and they throw the stupid thing in a bag because that’s what they do all day long and before you know it, you’ve just walked out with a bag inside another bag!

And if that wasn’t enough, the State is proposing we weigh all the kiddo’s at school and log that data into a database:

State Senator Beverly Gard (R-Greenfield) has proposed legislation that would require school corporations to collect information on students’ heights, ethnicities, ages, sex and even their weight.

Once students step on the scale their weights would be entered into a statewide data system that would help officials determine which part of the state has the most problems with obesity.

Then what? Send in the SWAT team to confiscate the chips and soda? I still remember how awful it was to have scoliosis testing done at school, I can’t imagine the horror this would induce. While we’re at it, why not log which kids we know (or think) are gay so we can send in the re-education teams?

For the love of all that is still good in the universe, government has got to stop trying to be everyone’s everything and let people deal with their own selves however they want. Everyone knows potato chips are bad, even high school kids know that. They still eat the stupid things because it’s better than that amorphous crap they’re serving down the hall in the cafeteria.

One good bit of news, though:

A state senator is asking a question she hopes will spur debate about sentencing laws and possibly save Indiana millions of dollars: Should the state legalize marijuana?

Although, she’s just asking for a study, so that’ll go nowhere. Everything else? Oh, those babies are ready for votin’!

Indiana University president Michael McRobbie will visit the IUPUI campus later today to announce two grants awarded to the Global Research Network Operations Center based in Indianapolis.

According to a news release, the money will enhance international network services that encourage scientists from around the globe to work together on projects. University spokesman Larry MacIntyre said the “multi-million-dollar” grants are funded by the National Science Foundation.

How wonderful. I’m sure this’ll fix everything.

Universities are like businesses, except they’re public and shielded from all the bad things about being a business. Likewise, they’re public entities and shielded from all the bad stuff about being a public entity. They live in the best of both worlds, without any of the bad. That’s a problem.

Universities, like businesses, want and have to raise money. Unfortunately, they tend do this by charging tuition, collecting donations, generating revenue AND collecting tax revenue. They’re worse than GM!

Let’s look at my educational establishment, IUPUI.

• Annual operating budget of $1.2 billion. The city of Indianapolis operates off of a budget just under a billion. Why does a university of 30,000 require more money to operate than an entire city of nearly a million?
• Average ’08 Freshman SAT score: 1,064. Too bad schools routinely exclude large groups of minority and “special admit” students like athletes or foreign students with English as a second language from these scores because they have the nasty habit of bringing down the average.
• Being an “engaged” campus and all, one would expect that more than a measly 19% of undergrads would be studying abroad or taking part in service leaning. Actually, since all freshmen are required to take service learning to boost that useless stat, it’s more like 10%.
• The average student/faculty ratio is 19:1. Too bad that includes hundreds of faculty members who do nothing but research all day (on what no one knows) and never even see or talk to undergrads.
• Over 90% of full-time faculty have advanced degrees, like a PhD. Probably  because you won’t let but a handful of people become full-time anyway. Leaving the grunt work of real teaching to adjunct faculty, who suffer day-in and day-out, with no way to advance. Whoops!
• Lots of great faculty! Wee! Like this guy, who I don’t believe even teaches anything. Or at least, nothing worth, you know, mentioning in his bio.
• All that research and yet, no way to know how effective they really are at the business of educating Hoosiers. Unless you look at this chart, which I guess shows a graduation rate of what? 35%? No one bothered to put some axis labels on it. That’s over six years, too. Wonder what the iconic four-year rate looks like.
• IU sure is cutting back. What with them looking for $59 million in cuts to make, I don’t know how they sleep at night cutting all of 5% from an entire STATE NETWORK of schools. Even if IUPUI cut 5% of it’s $1B budget, that wouldn’t be enough to cry about. I’d tell you how much IU as a system controls in its budget, but, uh, they don’t publish that and have nothing but a broken link and password-protected pages.
• Don’t get me started on this little gem from only a few years ago: Indiana’s public colleges and universities get an “F” for affordability. What a shame coming from a state in such a need of a more highly educated public, I guess.

All of this BS makes me hoppin’ mad. And don’t give me that, “But Justin, college grads make hundreds of thousands of dollars more in a lifetime than non-college grad” bull crap. Ever think that maybe the reason some people make more money than others is because they’re more ambitious, creative and desiring of a better lifestyle? Ambitious people tend to do ambitious things and school tends to fall into that. They’re a few others that would agree. The social aspect is bunk, too. Everyone knows at a school like IUPUI, no one socializes. Heck, even their own website says a little over a thousand students live on campus. There are more homeless people living under the overpass by campus than that.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the undergraduate degree is overrated. Especially when schools keep herding hundreds of students into programs like art and journalism, which have virtually no chances of ever being remotely profitable. If each school in the nation turned out 500 journalism grads, on average, each year, how many journalism jobs do you think there are in this country? Not enough, that’s for sure. What a bunch of liars.

Colleges and universities should report accurate statistics on who graduates from their programs, with what amount of debt and what they ultimately end up doing. That way when an art history major walks in the door, they know their chances of sweeping up shit at the zoo in 4 (or 6) years are 50/50.

This incessant need to research stuff is fine, but it had better bring results. What kind of an enterprise just gets to keep throwing money at problems that no one benefits from or had a problem to begin with anyway?

People who are teaching had better be damned passionate about what they teach and happen to enjoy teaching, to boot. No more grad students teaching intro courses. No more faculty members who like to study the mating habits of African dung beetles and nothing else forced to teach basic Bio 101. Competent adults, a desire to teach. Period. And lighten up on your lectures. Everyone knows people only retain about 10-20% of what they hear. You just keep talking because it’s darn cheap to yap at a room full of glazed eyeballs all day.

Stop raising tuition rates when you’re hiding behind millions, sometimes billions, in endowment money. If your amount of savings exceeds 10% of your annual operating budget each year, you have too much saved up for a public institution. Either spend it on a building project and pay for all of it in cash (no more tax and cost-spreading bonds) or immediately lower tuition rates. You’re a public entity — you don’t get to have profits beyond 10% of your budget.

Maybe then, and only then, can we start talking about real educational success in this country.

In trying to figure out the problem, the Car Talk guys, Click and Clack, had the following exchange:

Click: “Do you guys have emissions testing in Indiana or don’t you care about the environment?”
Caller: “No, we don’t do emission testing in Indiana.”
Clack: “No, they just pull their car into a farm yard and count how many hogs keel over.”
Click: “So this is like a 10-hogger?”
Clack: “And then they give you a little windshield sticker that says, “10 Hogs”, don’t they?”
Clack: “Well. There goes a state!”

Good stuff. You can listen to it online for the rest of the week. It’s segment 9.

In the scramble to find something, anything, to generate more revenue, states are considering new taxes on virtually everything: garbage pickup, dating services, bowling night, haircuts, even clowns.

“It’s hard enough doing what we do,” grumbled John Luke, a plumber in the Philadelphia suburbs. His services would, for the first time, come with an added tax if the governor has his way.

Opponents of imposing taxes on services like funerals, legal advice, helicopter rides and dry cleaning argue that this push comes as businesses are barely clinging to life and can ill afford to see customers further put off by new taxes. This is especially true, they say, in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, where some of the most sweeping proposals are being considered this spring.

Not in Indiana. Somehow, Indiana has been affected by the recession just as much, if not more than Michigan and Pennsylvania, yet we’re ok. Gee, I wonder what the difference could be…