Indigo presents $432.3 million budget, previews fare changes and Blue Line impacts

Indigo President and CEO Jennifer Pierce told the Municipal Corporations Committee on Sept. 17 that the agency’s proposed 2026 budget totals $432,300,000 and focuses on fiscal sustainability, frontline worker protection and increasing ridership.

Pierce said Indigo is using a 0-based budgeting process and has been running a fiscal-sustainability study to “take a look at every single part of our operation,” with an eye to stop spending on items that are no longer necessary and to identify new revenue sources. Chief Financial Officer Bart Brown told the committee the agency asked for $83,979,954 in operating (characters 1–3) in 2026, an increase of about $415,000 from 2025.

The budget includes a capital program heavily supported by federal grants. Brown said Indigo expects about $142,400,000 in capital grants, $20,500,000 in local cash (largely income tax) and $94,600,000 drawn from the $125,000,000 bond issue approved nearly two years earlier. He said federal and competitive grants now support more than half of Indigo’s capital program and that the agency has leveraged local dollars to attract “over half a billion federal…