B & O Rail Line Pedestrian Trail

I remember a few months ago, utility crews appeared to be replacing a pipe under Main St. Just yesterday, I had breakfast at Mister Lino's (after trying, unsuccessfully, to get a seat at Charlie Brown's). As an initial matter, breakfast at Mister Lino's is absolutely delicious.

However, the point of this post is that it appears that the old B & O rail line is being contemplated as a pedestrian trail to downtown. I couldn't be more supportive of this.

For starters, there is currently no real way to ride a bike from Speedway to downtown. As I work on the circle, of course I would like the option to ride a bike to my office. However, there's more than that. I would like to be able to ride with my son to Victory Field, or take my daughter to the zoo on bikes.

This is a look toward downtown from Main Street along the old B & O Line. Note that in the photo, the rail bed is simply covered in gravel. When I went by yesterday, it was paved, not unlike the Monon Trail.

Here is an aerial view of the rail bed.

Note that this photo is rather aged. You can see that 1911/SIK is not there yet, and neither is Big Woods. However, this photo really shows the footprint of the rail bed going east from Main Street.

For a somewhat more high-elevation view, see the next picture. I've superimposed the rail bed on top of the photo with a big ugly line to make it more obvious.

Again, this is an older Google earth image. It is oriented with North at the top, and you'll note that the western-most point of the line is Main Street, and the easternmost point is near the zoo downtown.

Below is a map view of where the B&O Line gets to downtown.

This is right across the street from the Indianapolis Zoo.

It is my understanding that from there, it would be very easy to connect to White River State Park and the Indianapolis Cultural Trail.

I can only imagine the benefits that a bike line such as this would bring the community. For starters, how nice would it be to have all of the tourist/convention crowd from downtown able to rent one of those bikeshare/Pacer bikes and ride to Speedway to patronize our businesses?

Similarly, I can imagine that during May, this would provide a nice way for people to ride to the west side to soak up some 500 festivities. I'm fairly sure we can all agree that having another way for people to get to the race would be helpful.

Furthermore, how about the economic development benefits of a bike line like this? It is not by accident that property along the Monon Trail has increased in value significantly. Additionally, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail has resulted in enormous property value appreciation.  Since 2008, the property along the 8-mile Cultural Trail has increased 148%, or $1 billion dollars (that's $1,000,000,000). This is not hippy dippy tree hugger stuff. This is cold-hearted capitalism: dollars and cents.

To  the degree that Speedway is perhaps held back in its efforts by the struggles of some neighborhoods between Speedway and downtown, we know how to solve this problem. The Monon Trail did just that for Broad Ripple vis a vis downtown. While I don't have any survey data to link to, it seems to me that if the Monon Trail was not working out, then Carmel and Westfield would not be dumping money into extending the trail, and the City of Indianapolis would not have put more money into the Cultural Trail.

I'm sure that I will have more thoughts on this in the future. Frankly, I have more thoughts now, but I don't want to go overboard. Biking trails benefit property values; they encourage economic activity by encouraging people to patronize the businesses on them. They encourage relationships by getting people out of their cars and into interactive situations. They contribute to community health. They couldn't hurt the brewing controversies around parking. While not a panacea to everything, I fail to see the negative effects of this.

To the degree that our town councilors (Jason DeLisle, Gary Raikes, Jeff Matthews, David Lindsey, Eileen Fisher) are on board with this, I applaud them. To the degree that they are not, I ask why not? Likewise with our City-County Councilor (Janice McHenry), State Representative (Karlee Macer), and State Senator (Mike Young) . . . if they are supportive, I applaud and encourage additional action. If they are supportive, please explain why not.