This brief is adapted from notes taken by Documenter Mitch Duncan, who covered the June Merchants West quarterly meeting.📝 Read more about what happened.
The next steps in extending the B&O Trail were laid out during the most recent Merchants West Quarterly meeting. The B&O Trail runs approximately 62 miles from downtown Indianapolis to Clermont, into Hendricks County across Brownsburg’s southside, through North Salem into the northside of Putnam County, ending in Parke County’s Montezuma.
The B&O Trail project has been in the works for nearly 30 years. Brainstorming, development and planning began in the mid-1990s, but a ribbon-cutting to officially open the trail for the first time didn’t come until 2010. It seemed that the next big step in the B&O Trail’s development was coming in 2019 when the Next Level Trails Project (a state-level grant) resulted in $4.5 million being granted toward the B&O Trail.
What would come of that grant had to wait until 2025 due to the COVID-19 pandemic halting all production of extending the trail in Marion County near Maplewood.
Jeff Smallwood, the president of B&O Trail Association, said that the first step in extending the B&O Trail after receiving the initial grant was to add approximately three miles onto the existing path in Marion County. This would have coincided with the Speedway Trails Association’s project that was funded by the same grant.
Now that progress is being made again, Smallwood clarified that completion of the B&O Trail from Raceway Road to High School Road is set to take place over the course of three phases. A significant portion of the trail – from Raceway Road to Ringneck Road – has already been completed.
To avoid trail flooding after severe storms, the B&O Trail Association partnered with Citizens Energy to build sewer tanks underneath the new parts of the trail. In this partnership, Citizens Energy provided $400,000. This development also hopes to prevent flooding into residential yards along the trail.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, the B&O Trail Association also received $90,000 from Hendricks County’s American Rescue Plan funding. The rest of the trail needing to be completed near Maplewood took $10,000 of this funding, while the rest went toward upgrading to an asphalt parking lot and building a new bridge west of Maplewood.
Lastly, Greg Midgley of the White Lick Creek and Vandalia Trail Alliance provided an update on bike trails on Indianapolis’ far westside. The first phase of WLCVTA’s project will connect Vandalia Trail in a nine-mile stretch between Plainfield and Girls School Road in Indianapolis.
Kyle Smedley was an Indianapolis Press Club Foundation fellow working this summer with Mirror Indy. You can follow him on X @KyleSmedley03.
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