Based on public feedback on the Concepts and Draft Plan, the MACOG Board recommended that in the Short-Term the Interurban Trolley network should focus on developing maintain existing coverage and expanding coverage with the additional investment that the City of Goshen is providing. As a result, the Short-Term Network for the Interurban Trolley would pursue a 70% ridership and 30% coverage service goal, a slight shift toward coverage , from the current service level mix of 77% ridership and 23% coverage.

SHORT TERM NETWORK

Pursuing the 70/30 service goal, the Short Term Interurban Trolley Network proposes the set of adjustments The Short-Term concept makes a few adjustments to improve service within the current budget and the policy direction from the MACOG Board to maintain nearly all existing coverage. There are more changes in Goshen since the City has committed to funding two additional buses. Key differences from today’s network include:

• All routes are numbered. With the addition of two new routes, color-coded route naming does not work well. Routes are now numbered:

  • Yellow Line is now Route 30.

  • Red Line is now Route 50.

  • Green Line is now Route 32.

  • Blue Line is now Route 33.

  • Orange Line is now Route 35.

• Routes 32 and 33 each have small routing tweaks to connect shopping centers and other destinations more efficiently. 

• Route 35 (Orange Line) no longer serves Concord Mall since activity in that area is much lower as the mall is mostly closed. With the time savings from not serving the mall, 
  route 35 now serves more of the industrial areas along Middlebury Street, Toledo Road, Eastland Drive, and County Road 17. 

• In Goshen, new Route 52 serves West and North Goshen, reaching Roxbury Park, Arbor 
  Ridge Apartments, and the Chamberlain Neighborhood.

• New Route 53 serves parts of South Goshen including Historic Southside, Rieth Park, 
  Greencroft, all the way to Winchester Trails. 

• With the new Route 53, Route 50 (Red Line) is shifted to Main Street to directly serve Goshen
  Hospital and Goshen College. Route 50 also has a new deviation to serve the new County
  Courthouse location and to save time for this deviation, Route 50 only serves the south side
  of Concord Mall.

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The Short-Term Interurban Trolley Network (right) also makes a number of changes to routing within within the Downtown Elkhart area. Overall, routing is simplified slightly. A few deviations are removed to speed up service and some routes are consolidated to provide more two-way service. 
 

• Route 32 (Green Line) to the southwest has been adjusted to be two-way on Benham, Dr MLK Jr Drive, and 6th to Indiana to provide two-way service to Washington Gardens.

• Route 32 (Green Line) to the northwest has been adjusted to use Marion Street to Oakland to Indiana for its outbound trip to provide coverage where the southwest portion of the loop used to serve. For its inbound path, it has been shifted to use Michigan to Lexington to reach downtown. 

• The outbound path of Route 35 (Orange Line) has been adjusted to follow 3rd to Harrison to Main to Middlebury to Prairie to Waterfall to Richmond Street. It then follows its existing  path to Pierre Moran Park. These changes have been made to reduce the time it takes to
  get out of downtown and allow the route to be extended to more of the industrial areas to
  the east.

• Route 35 (Orange Line) will serve Waterfall Apartments at the intersection of Waterfall Drive and Prairie Avenue in both directions, instead of only in one-direction. Service will be from stops on Prairie Street as the route will no longer pull up to the front door, via Division Street, as it does today.

• In Elkhart, service is spread quite thin, and most routes have long one-way loops to  maximize coverage. As discussed in the Choices Report, these large one-way loops create challenges for travel around the city. A major challenge is that they force very indirect travel for many trips.

  • Route 35 faces another challenge in that it is the largest, most indirect loop in the system, and it travels counter-clockwise. By traveling counterclockwise, it make many more left turns than right turns inits movement around southeastern Elkhart. In
    transit, extra turns add more time and left turns in particular are usually time consuming and less reliable. Therefore, there are a number of reasons to reverse the direction of the Route 35 loop. 

  • The one advantage to the counterclockwise pattern is that Routes 32 and 35 can be timed to meet at the Pierre Moran Shopping Center, so riders in southwest Elkhart can transfer to go to Ivy Tech or other destinations on Route 35 without having to go all the way downtown. Switching the direction of Route 35 would make this timed connection impossible. 

  • In the Short-Term Network recommendations, Route 35 keeps its current counterclockwise design. It is worth consideration by the community, though, if the timed connection at Pierre Moran is worth the less reliable operation of Route 35. ​

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In the Short-Term Network, the new routes added in Goshen have hourly service with the same level and pattern of service as other hourly routes in the Interurban Trolley Network, from about 5am to 7pm each weekday and Saturdays. Overall, the frequency of all-day service is the same as today, with limited evening service and no Sunday service.