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Indianapolis plans to use $30.5 million in federal transit funding on eight street projects, including a pedestrian bridge connecting the Nickel Plate Trail over Keystone Avenue and a transformation of Madison Avenue.
The Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization on Thursday doled out the funds that will be used for the projects by the Indianapolis Department of Public Works starting in 2027. The funding was first announced by the IMPO in April and marked the largest annual amount the city has received from the IMPO in more than a decade.
The IMPO is responsible for planning and programming regional transportation funds in the eight-county central Indiana region. Indianapolis received funding for eight of the 17 regional projects selected by the IMPO in 2024, accounting for nearly half of the overall funding.
The application process for funding regional projects is highly competitive. For this funding round, the transportation agency received 66 applications for funding totaling $234 million, IMPO Executive Director Anna Gremling said. The projects are evaluated for their impact on air quality, improvements to congestion, pavement quality and safety.
Brandon Herget, director of the Department of Public Works, credited the increase in funding to DPW staff “narrowing in” on the types of projects the planning organization wants to see and creating a competitive applications.
On Thursday, Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett highlighted the pedestrian bridge project while speaking at Easterseals Crossroads, a rehabilitation center along the Nickel Plate Trail.
About 30,000 to 40,000 vehicles travel down Keystone Avenue each day, Hogsett said, adding “a crossing like this is necessary to prioritize the safety of vulnerable users of our infrastructure like pedestrians and cyclists who will use this trail.”
The Indianapolis segment of the Nickel Plate Trail runs between 42nd and 96th streets. Since construction began in the fall of 2023, the city has sought federal funds to bridge the trail over Keystone Avenue and 82nd Street.
Local governments are required to match the funds. As part of that requirement, Indianapolis will contribute $1.2 million to the bridge project. It has a total projected cost of nearly $6.5 million.
Herget said the city did not, however, receive funding for a similar pedestrian crossing for the Monon Trail at 86th Street.
Two Indianapolis City-County Councilo members on the north side, Nick Roberts and Brienne Delaney, are asking constituents for feedback on that intersection with the Nickel Plate Trail, along with the Monon Trail crossing at 82nd Street, in hopes of gaining federal funding through a different grant process.
The other projects selected for funding:
- Madison Avenue roadway rehabilitation – $11,762,960: This project includes the rehabilitation of Madison Avenue from Martin Street to Pleasant Run Parkway, including a “road diet” to reduce the existing five-lane section to a four-lane section. The roadway will include two vehicular travel lanes in each direction, a multi-use trail to accommodate the interurban trail within the corridor and a sidewalk. This project is the third funded phase for the larger Madison Avenue road diet project meant to improve safety for all road users, reduce long-term maintenance demands, and reconnect neighborhoods along the Madison Avenue corridor.
- High School Road over CSX/Conrail Bridge rehabilitation – $2,245,346: This bridge rehabilitation will include replacing the bridge deck and bridge railings and widening the sidewalk.
- 38th Street over Little Eagle Creek Bridge rehabilitation – $2,214,356: This bridge rehabilitation will include deck milling, deck patching, rigid deck overlay placement, and replacement of the concrete bridge approach slabs and guardrails.
- 46th Street over Indian Creek Bridge rehabilitation – $1,515,460: This bridge rehabilitation will include replacing the bridge deck, widening the substructure, installing new box beams in the widened portion, and replacing bridge railings.
- 46th Street and Mitthoefer Road roundabout – $1,568,182: Construction of a roundabout at the 46th Street and Mitthoefer Road intersection, including sidewalks around the roundabout with ADA curb ramps, stormwater improvements, and utility relocation.
- South County Line Road widening from Depot to Woodcreek Drive – $5,970,560: This capacity expansion project will include widening about 2,000 linear feet along County Line Road, installing a new traffic signal at the Railroad Road intersection, and upgrading the railroad crossing signal on the west approach.
- Knozone program – $320,000: Knozone is part of the city’s Office of Sustainability and provides outreach and education to constituents, businesses, and schools concerning air quality actions, multi-modal transportation options, and energy-efficiency programs that reduce air pollution and improve air quality.
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The Keystone Crossover: Can we consider other options on how to get the most out of $6,500,000.00 in public spending? Who comes up with these sad “solutions?” An ugly $6.5mm structure is not the best way to get pedestrians across one solitary street, no matter how busy it is. Please stop letting highway engineers design these crazy concepts before they have sufficiently familiarized themselves with good urban practice as seen around the world. (God, give them a travel budget and some curiousity, please! – or at least google maps?) If pedestrian safety is the issue, try to think about how we can divide $6,500,000.00 by, say 20, and then figure out how to make twenty (20) safe crossings at a cost per copy of a measly $325,000.00. That will do far more for pedestrians without the accompanying ugliness to blight the landscape. What a waste, dagnabit! :/ So sad…Indy. Do better. Expect more. Please!
The only way to get pedestrians safely across Keystone without a bridge would be to narrow it to a single lane in either direction at the crossing with raised crosswalks to force cars to slow down. I agree that we should do this on Keystone and at 20 more of the worst intersections in the city. Ideally, every intersection in the city.
So the city figures out how to get $30 million in federal funding to help supplement projects on their backlog and you’re going to complain about it?
Here’s an idea – maybe tell state legislators to stop hoarding all the funding for INDOT and give more to cities and towns. Then maybe the city of Indianapolis will do projects your way instead of tailoring the projects to what will get matching funds.
The Southside of Indianapolis is torn up because the state decided that what the Southside needed was to expand turn lanes 3-4 feet at the intersections. If they’d actually asked the residents, they’d realized that what was needed was for the actual roads is to be rebuilt. So Meridian Street is one lane in multiple places while the work slowly takes place.
INDOT could use a bit of a funding diet, if you ask me.
That’s a good start for IMPO, but we need the city’s leaders to do more for road safety, on every road, NOW. In 2024 so far, 22 pedestrians and cyclists have been killed – and already 348 incidents (more than 2 a day) in Indianapolis. Drivers have lost their minds out there.
Granted, the image show previously was not correct. Nonetheless, safe pedestrian crossing can be accomodated without a $6.5mm pedestrian bridge over the Keystone. There is already a wide grass strip at the actual location where the trail will cross the Avenue. Without reducing the number of lanes in either direction that grass strip can accommodate a wide pedestrian island as can be found on big busy streets in large cities around the word. Combined with appropriately designed physical barriers and lights, and even some attractive streetscape landscaping, that crossing could be made extraordinarily safe (and attractive) without the extravagant cost and visual blight of an overstreet pedestrian bridge.
Nothing makes a pedestrian feel safer than sitting in the middle of 4 lanes of traffic moving at 50 mph! Seeing the damage to the medians along 38th or the median sculptures that have been destroyed along Emerson is all one needs to understand this is not a good faith suggestion, but just one that would ensure drivers continue to rule the road at everyone else’s expense
DPW deserves a commendation for this. They adjusted their submittals to make sure they were strong, high-performing projects and were rewarded with Federal funds to cover projects that couldn’t be funded locally. Good job!
Great news
Mars Hill and Decatur township are needs sidewalks so people do not have to walk on the highway, railroad tracks, or Mann Road.