A proposed plan showing how Northwest Indiana’s transportation and land use could change over the next quarter-century, and how the region could adjust to climate change, is available now.
The Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission has been working on the update to its 40-year plan, called NWI 2050, for more than a year.
The federal government requires NIRPC to prepare long-range plans and to update them every four years, NIRPC Executive Director Ty Warner said at the commission’s meeting Thursday.
Visitors to the Lake, Porter and LaPorte county fairs and several bike stores last summer, and at a few other events since then, saw early versions of the update, called NWI 2050.
The update is available at http://nirpc.org/nwi-2050, and is open for public comment through May 5.
It’s lengthy. Anyone who wants to print out the entire document will need a ream of paper, as it occupies 506 pages.
NIRPC’s full commission will be asked to approve the plan at its July 20 meeting.
The update comes in six sections — active transportation, climate, freight, land use, roads and transit.
It includes new emphasis on changes in climate, and in moving freight around the region.
Also Thursday, the commission approved a $600,000 contract with Butler, Fairman and Seufert, of Indianapolis, to survey four sections of the planned Marquette Greenway trail between Chicago and Michigan.
Those include 3.9 miles in Gary, 1.6 miles in Portage, 3.4 miles in Michigan City and 0.4 miles along U.S. 12 in Michigan.
NIRPC was awarded a nearly $18 million federal grant in 2021 to work on sections of the trail, first envisioned in 2003 by former U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky.
Construction companies could submit proposal next year to design and build the trail segments.
At the meeting’s end, commission attorney David Hollenbeck commemorated the life of Dennis Rittenmeyer, the former president of Calumet College of St. Joseph, who died recently. He had been active in regional organizations, including the Regional Development Authority, the Quality of Life Council, the Lake Area United Way, and the Regional Bus Authority.
Rittenmeyer was “a leader in being attuned to regional projects, and a leader in how we solve projects together,” Hollenbeck said.
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