By Howard Greninger
TERRE HAUTE — Terre Haute’s Transit Utility will receive more than $1.36 million in direct federal money from the federal economic recovery and reinvestment act passed by Congress.
The city’s bus system had previously been projected to receive about $225,000. The city now plans, among other things, to buy four new hybrid buses.
“It will be the first time the city has ever had a hybrid or biofuel bus,” said Brad Miller, city transportation director. “We don’t know the size yet, but likely about the size we have now, which carry 24 passengers.”
The city already had planned to spend most of its stimulus funding, more than $146,000, to rehabilitate its bus maintenance building and buy one new diesel bus.
Other improvements now planned include replacing fare boxes and making a computer software upgrade; upgrading bus global positioning system systems; and getting five new small bus shelters, which cost about $6,000 each.
The increased funding was announced Monday by the transportation policy committee of West Central Indiana Economic Development District. WCIEDD serves as the metropolitan planning organization for Terre Haute and Vigo County. The MPO’s policy committee determines what projects are eligible for the federal stimulus funding.
The committee, comprised of Terre Haute and Vigo County officials, as well as representatives from the Indiana Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration, unanimously voted to target more than $2.7 million in stimulus money for Brown Avenue phase two, making a boulevard from Locust Street to Wabash Avenue in Terre Haute, and to improve the intersection of Seventh and Springhill streets in Vigo County.
However, Mayor Duke Bennett said the city received notification of a rule change that now requires Terre Haute to pay about 9 percent of the Brown Avenue project, estimated to cost $1.8 million.
“It means we have to find the money to do that by delaying another project a few months,” Bennett said. “I really don’t think it will be much of a bearing. They just keep coming out with more rules and more strings attached on [the stimulus funds]. It is still worth it because we probably couldn’t do this project for years” without the stimulus funds, the mayor said.
The federal stimulus funds require projects to be shovel ready, with all preliminary engineering complete and all right-of-way property bought. The county’s Seventh and Springhill intersection improvement project, estimated to cost $1 million, still must have an environmental assessment completed, Netherlain said, but the county is expected to have that done by early summer.
Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com.
