Recently, I have been honored with an appointment to the Plan2020 initiative as a part of the Connect Indy Committee. Â I ask the readers of this blog take this as an opportunity to make some recommendations that they wish the initiative will address. Please post a comment, or send me an e-mail at kevin dot kastner at gmail dot com. Â This is our chance to have a say in the six plans that the city will be updating as a part of this process.
Here’s a simple one: take the Multi-Modal Design Guidelines that the City spent a bunch of money to have developed, pull it off the shelf, blow off the years of dust on top, incorporate it into the Thoroughfare Plan, and require that DPW’s rebuilding and expansion of thoroughfares be designed as recommended therein. That latter part might actually require an ordinance change. Frankly, what it all requires is an Administration that will demand that DPW do a 180-degree turn on its mindset that cars (and large trucks) always come first, that trees near streets are bad, and that sidewalks are best located directly adjacent to the curb, especially along high speed arterials that have no on-street parking.
Of course, most people who are interested in such things would rather not wait yet another six years to see these changes be implemented, but better late than never.
Thanks Paul. I’ll see what I can do on these issues.
Kevin, to provide a more succinct and perhaps more effective message, I’d advocate for having the Division of Planning actually in charge of planning and designing all capital improvements, with the DPW then responsible for actually delivering the product. There is a huge disconnect between what the DOP puts in the their planning documents and what the DPW delivers, likely because the DPW feels little to no need to review and incorporate the recommendations contained in the DOP planning documents. Many cities have their DOP plan and design their street infrastructure. Why not in Indy?
I would second this and can’t believe DPW is in charge of planning the street infrastructure. DPW can’t even keep up with fixing the most basic infrastructure in the city, let alone do good planning and design. This could be somewhat revolutionary for bringing Indy’s infrastructure into the 21st century instead of the mid 20th century.
Seems well and good but why only is it concerned with Marion County. The economic strength of the city is in Hamilton and Boone and Hendricks and Johnson Counties. Why not put that into the equation. Politically the logical way to go to get things done is for Indianapolis to annex Carmel and Brownsburg and Greenwood so all these plans get on the same page.
I think we should get a commuter tax from the donuts. It could work like this, we pull 5% from their income taxes and it goes to Indianapolis, where these people work. The places they live still get 95%, the tax payer is not paying anymore than they did before, and Indianapolis gets millions without raising any taxes. Heck, it might be a small incentive to keep some of these people here after a couple years once they see how nice Indy has become from an influx of several 10s of millions into the coffers.
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