INDIANAPOLIS — Those living in the Community Heights neighborhood say they have an issue with motorists speeding in the area.
To avoid accidents waiting to happen, they created a traffic-calming mural on 10th Street between Emerson and Arlington Avenues.
Leslie Schulte is the President of the Community Heights Neighborhood Organization. She says the calming-mural is part of tactical urbanism.
“Our proposed design change is to add protection to the bike lane and add a center median that still allows you to turn but breaks it up so people can’t use that lane to pass or as another lane of traffic,” Schulte said.
The organization is setting up roughly 300 barriers along 10th Street.
100 of them will be used to protect street trees that will be installed in the center turn lane. The other 200 will be lined up on the bike lane in hopes of protecting bikers, sidewalk and resident’s yards.
Schulte says the neighborhood organization recorded speeds of the cars before the installation and asked residents how they felt when walking, riding bikes and waiting for the bus.
They say the majority of those surveyed did not feel safe and wanted a change.
“We’ve only lived here for about three years and there’s been between eight to 10 accidents outside our house,” resident Emilie Shank said. “People are careless. I’m tired of all the drivers racing down 10th Street and almost rear-ending people.”
Shank says she supports the traffic-calming mural because she wants to improve the safety of the neighborhood for her daughter’s sake.
“I have a seven-and-a-half-month-old and I want to know her future is safe when she goes outside to play with friends or to go to school,” Shank said.
Schulte says they hope to get the data that demonstrates residents feel safer using 10th Street with the barriers and eventually install a more permanent structural change.
