Construction to improve stadium park-and-ride

A construction project underway in the Memorial Stadium parking lot should improve safety and comfort for campus bus passengers, IU parking and bus officials said.

The project, which began in late July, will install two shelters for passengers waiting for the X and A buses in the parking lot, IU Landscape Architect Mia Williams said.

 “You don’t have students out there where they could potentially get hit by a bus,” Williams said. “To me that’s a marked improvement to standing out on the same surface that the buses travel on.”

The project has an estimated completion date in late September.

“What we told contractors is even if the roof is not in place, we need all the travel path of the bus and the parking lot open and available so the park-and-ride can run,” Williams said.

The A and X buses will continue to pull into the stadium parking lot until the project is done, Perry Maull, operations manager for the campus bus system, said.

The station will consolidate the multiple stadium stops, removing the East 17th Street and North Dunn Street stop.

“There will only be one bus stop at the stadium,” Maull said. “Right now we have buses coming and going in all kinds of directions.”

The project will also include a pedestrian-activated traffic signal on North Dunn Street at East 19th Street. This will be the first such traffic signal in the city, Maull said.

“Before, you basically were standing in the middle of the parking lot in the rain waiting for the buses to cue up,” Williams said, “but now the buses will come up next to
the shelters.”