INDIANAPOLIS — Tierra Artis walks her mini poodle, Sunny James, around Indianapolis.
“I want to be able to clear my mind and enjoy this beautiful weather," Artis said.
But that can be hard to do when cars are zooming past her.
“Indianapolis, I feel that they do not have that many sidewalks compared to Gary, Indiana, Chicago, that pedestrians can walk their dogs and feel safe and not be in the streets," she said.
That’s where Indy DPW’s Community Powered Infrastructure is providing solutions. It allows Indy residents to work with the city to make changes within their neighborhoods.
There are three programs: the Indianapolis Neighborhood Infrastructure Partnership, Tactical Urbanism and Art in the Right-of-Way.
These projects are all over the city.
Whether it’s water barriers between the road and the sidewalk on Calvary Street or a painted mural in the intersection in front of the Kan-Kan.
“On your morning commute, you probably say there’s one corner where people cut the corner and they take it too fast, or there’s one street where there’s not enough separation between the vehicular lanes and the sidewalk, these are test projects we can put before we take a more high cost action in the future," Indy DPW Spokesman Kyle Bloyd said.
That was the case for the Community Heights neighborhood on East 10th Street.
“We broke up the center turn lane with island street trees. We arranged the barriers in a diamond pattern and put the tree in the middle to mimic a median. We also lined the bike lanes with barriers," Former Community Heights Neighborhood Organization President Leslie Schulte said.
Schulte says drivers slowed down considerably with the tactical urbanism in place in the summer of 2023.
“We found a 73 percent decrease in the number of crashes. We went from 30 crashes in 90 days the year prior to only 8 crashes while our new design was being tested," she said.
Since then, it’s become easier for neighborhoods to fund these projects.
Tactical Urbanism and Art in the Right-of-Way now feature a 50/50 cost share component and a lending library.
“We just put another $40,000 into building out or lending library with items like water barriers, A-frames and cones," Bloyd said.
The application window for either project will be open through August 30.
