After 7 long years of fundraising and background legal work, the Irvington streetscape project kicked off yesterday.  Photos of the groundbreaking can be seen via the Irvington Development Organization’s facebook page. This project will help reclaim Washington Street for pedestrians in the neighborhood, which has seen a good deal of new locally-owned businesses open in the past few years.
According to the article in the Indianapolis Star, the first phase will take place on the 5 blocks between Irvington and Bolton Avenues, which could also be considered Downtown Irvington:
The second phase will be focused on the western portion of Irvington:
I am quite excited about the prospect of strolling down Washington Street in Irvington after this project has been completed. Irvington is perhaps our city’s most bucolic neighborhood, and it deserves a great Main Street.
I will be living in this neighborhood this summer. I am glad to see that this area is developing new pathways. I am looking forward to this summer!!
Finally! I have been waiting for this since I moved to Irvington over 6 years ago!
Does anyone have a link to the actual plans that are proposed for Washington Street?
Graeme had mentioned that they are restricted under Federal guidelines for the project.
Restricted under federal guidelines? That doesn’t even make sense. Here’s the DPW website about the project. It has the landscape sheets that most non-engineers are interested in:
http://www.indy.gov/eGov/City/DPW/RebuildIndy/Projects/Pages/Irvington-Streetscape.aspx
I’m sure Margaret Banning would be glad to meet with anyone specifically about details. There are plenty of resources out there for those who really want to know… you just have to ask the right people.
Ok, thanks, we were unaware of these plans.
Great to see it kick off! The plans were posted at the event yesterday.
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Kudos to Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, who will donate the plant materials for the project. Matt H. was even there to plant a tree.
Thanks for posting the link Jason. I’m looking forward to the aesthetic improvements here. I wonder if there has been consideration given to how the landscaped medians might impact future BRT or LRT on Washington. I realize that would likely be several years down the road, but I could certainly see these improvements needing to be removed or relocated to make way for new tracks, exclusive lanes, and/or station infrastructure.
Oh, I have to do it…
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[Insert tongue in cheek]
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(Gasp) You mean it might be a bad thing to remove pavement from a major arterial and choke it down so much that transit is impeded?
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[Remove tongue from cheek]
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The plans appear to call for preserving the buried interurban rails in place.
Oh Chris you little devil you. I’m going to change my mindset and never support any pavement narrowing on the off chance that a transit project might need the pavement in the future. I think the medians are a good idea, but not if they’re likely to need to be removed in the next few years to accommodate BRT or LRT.
I couldn’t really tell from the plans, but I would doubt that the interurban rails are being preserved since they are only a few inches under the surface and curbs generally extend about a foot below the surface. I also suspect the tree planting would be incompatible with maintaining the rails.
My point is that major arterials (and even “minor” ones like 10th) need to have all their current and possible functions and configurations thought through before adopting the “flavor of the month” realignment. Mostly only downtown has 100-120′ ROW and 80-100 feet of asphalt.
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Well, downtown and Pendleton Pike. 🙂
I’d like to think that there are ways to plan transit around this down the road. We tear up recently built infrastructure all the time to replace with something new that comes along.
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I assume this would be no different. The hard work would be insuring that whatever is replacing the existing, will respect anything positive.
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The BRT planning accounts for the narrow roadway, or at least recognizes that it is there and this will be up to the design team to figure out a solution. Like I pointed out in my BRT post recently, the entire route does not need dedicated lanes and in some narrow areas like this, perhaps a compromise will be struck. Just have to see how it develops.
Big win for 5855 E. Washington last night as well!