Letter: Nickel Plate plan ignores public will

Regarding Leah McGrath’s column [Nickel Plate Trail is plan to create our next destiny, Sept. 8], for a city that touts regionalism as a worthy goal, Fishers’ attitude toward the Nickel Plate Railroad is awfully parochial. Railroad rights of way, by their nature, connect communities and ought to be judged by their value to all the cities and towns along the line. Yet Fishers is pursuing its own agenda, regardless of the impact on its neighbors.

I attended both of the public sessions McGrath refers to, where local residents were invited to express their opinions on the future of the railroad. A written survey taken as people entered the [first session, in Fishers] revealed equal support for both the trail and the train. No one knows what people thought afterwards as no one checked. 

Two days later, the Noblesville session was changed to a more traditional format, with attendees invited to express their opinion in a public forum. All 40 or so of the speakers except one (who lived in Indianapolis) spoke in favor of keeping the train, despite the city’s efforts to stack the room with trail supporters.

The part of the process that was transparent was very clear: an overwhelming majority of people want to keep the train. Some may not live in Fishers, but this is an issue that transcends Fishers.

Most people would support a trail that leaves the tracks intact. But they reject a vision of the right of way’s “destiny” that involves pop-up shops, drone zones and aromatic gardens. You can put those anywhere but excursion trains to Indy require tracks on a contiguous right of way that is already in place. The Indiana Transportation Museum, for all its faults, proved there is a market for that before being unceremoniously dumped by politicians who think they know better than the market.

The people told our leaders the answer: leave the rails intact and build alongside if you must have a trail on the right of way.

__________

Mike Corbett