Fall 2017 SAVI Online Magazine Emagazine Fall 2017 FINAL | Page 5

FEATURE STORY
WHO RIDES THE BUS?
MAYBE NOT WHO YOU THINK
Kevin Sutton catches an IndyGo
bus every workday at 6:15 a.m. from
his home on the near-east side
of Indianapolis to his workplace
downtown. At 4:30 p.m., he takes the
reverse route home.
Sutton enjoys the 35-minute ride
because he likes people watching,
and because it’s a connection to his
childhood, when he would visit his
grandmother in Chicago and his family
would take public transit downtown.
“Riding the bus,” he says, “you learn
that we’re all people. And you learn
not to be scared of people.”
A new report by The Polis Center
suggests that Sutton is typical in many
ways. Who Rides the Bus: Examining
Transit Ridership in Marion County is
based on data from a 2016 survey of
riders commissioned by IndyGo and
neighborhood-level socio-economic
indicator data available in SAVI. It
finds that about half of IndyGo trips
are work related, about 75 percent of
riders are employed, and 57 percent
are, like Sutton, African-American.
But Sutton, an investigator with
the Marion County Public Defender
Agency, defies stereotypes about who
rides the bus in at least one important
way: He has plenty of other options for
getting around. He walks and bikes,
and he owns a car that he uses
mainly for buying groceries and going
to church.
The report notes that a substantial
percentage of riders fall into this
category. They choose to take the bus
even though they have other options.
“The results challenge the myth
that people who use transit are low-
income people who rely on it because
they don’t have access to a vehicle,”
says Kelly Davila, a senior research
analyst with The Polis Center and
co-author of the report.
“Beyond just saying that wasn’t
true, we wanted to look at who uses
public transit and why. One takeaway
is that riders are a cross-section
of people who live in nearly every
neighborhood in Indianapolis. And,
they’re people who have access to
other types of transportation and
use public transit for different
reasons. Just bringing that up, so
that it can be discussed publicly,
is an important step.”
It’s important because it suggests
that there is a big pool of potential
riders for IndyGo, if it’s seen as a
viable option.
Build it and they will ride
That was a key finding of a
membership survey done last year
by IndyHub, an organization that
connects people in their 20s and
30s to opportunities for being
involved in the life of the city. It
asked its membership, mostly young
professionals, a series of questions
about what changes they would like to
see in the city, and what improvements
would make them more inclined to
stay in Indianapolis long-term.
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