Town Council - Regular Meeting

and she'll handle most of the presentation. Colton is in the back in red. And then we have several town officials here as well to help through this. So short version, we had a public meeting sometime back, a lot of questions then. We had a really big turnout of people coming out and asking questions, so we've taken some of that. We realized we needed to do a little bit of explanation as to what some of the information on the boards were and why they were there because we heard some different conflicting inputs. So we wanted to get some more info tonight to try to make sure that we understand what the community really wants. long complicated process of getting the funding that's necessary one of the things that's important is to show projects every one of those projects has a dollar figure next year and they're expensive and that was one of the main things we were receiving it's not something residents can afford to pay for all these things so keeping opportunities that growth can pay for growth and not necessarily residents have to pay for that's important to do that is we have to reach consensus on what it is you want to do of something like this, and one of the comments we've heard is, has the town done other plans? What makes this any different? That's a good question, and it's something you should hold your elected officials accountable to. That's something that's really important, that they follow through with this, and that takes you guys showing up, and that's why you're here tonight, not soon, because you care. So, so much of this time is built to understand what it is you want to do, so you just chase the dollars to fund some of the important projects that need to happen to address the traffic. We're gonna walk you through what this thoroughfare plan is. We're gonna walk you through some of the specific projects that are part of it. You're gonna see a network map, and you've seen that in the first meeting, that some of those things are the same. Some of it's changed a little bit. So much of it, though, is just trying to make sure we're all on the same page for Chase Meads and know what the priorities are And then what we'll do is go through a 20-minute or so presentation, and we've got some boards around here. And so we'll try to handle a lot of questions, just a one-on-one, and let you guys look at those to see if what we're saying adds up and really works on those maps. And we'll stick around and answer questions after that. Jennifer?

Thank you, Corey. So as Corey was saying, we're gonna do a brief presentation. We'll have a few minutes as a group for Q&A, and then we welcome you to look through these boards in the back. I believe Corey introduced us all, but we are HWC Engineering. We're working with Midtown to come up with a thoroughfare plan and potential solutions to move in the future. So what is a thoroughfare plan? You hear terms like how brings the plans, different things. So a thoroughfare plan is again to guide town leadership. It helps identify roads, intersections for future improvements, areas maybe that are safety concerns that need to be addressed, areas for future roadways. It just starts to set you up for your transportation network for 10, 20 years in the future. So the purpose of the thoroughfare plan is again to start planning for the future. We wanna look at what are your current traffic patterns? what is the expected changes in those traffic patterns is maybe development happens to your north or your south around the community that may not be danville specific but does affect danville traffic and what's happening there we want to identify those solutions and have most importantly the community evaluate those potential solutions as corey was saying this is about getting your input your consensus Town leadership is really asking, what are your thoughts? These are thoughts maybe they have had or we've looked at, but we want to really understand what the community sees as issues and how we could potentially solve those issues. And then again, it's a roadmap from here. Once we start putting the plan together, we have consensus, we're gonna put together a roadmap. So these are the things you can do in the short term, the long term, to help build out that network and to address some of the concerns. So this process specifically, the thoroughfare plan process, is led by a steering committee made up of D&L residents, elected officials, stakeholders, and we have been meeting with them, the planning team, has been meeting with them regularly going through what are the issues, what are potential solutions, funding. I believe It was wealthy. It was 1,400 people took the public surveys. I hope each of you were able to do that. And that is where you saw some maybe first flush of ideas of how to build a network. And we got your input there. We also had the public workshop during that time. Again, that was very similar to what was online and a chance for the community to really talk about us, but also your leaders within the community as well. Tonight we're at the open house. That's what we're doing here. So we've refined those ideas a little bit, and now we're again looking for your input. Are we on the right track? Or does this need more refinement?

And then later this year is when we move into that adoption process, which will be kind of quick here at Town Council.

So the steering committee is made up of about 15 people. It is town employees, your elected officials, stakeholders, school representation on there as well. And you mentioned also meeting with stakeholders. About 20 people participated in that. Those were residents, business owners, HOA, maybe presidents, the builders, schools, hospitals, and employee safety. So really we got to sit down with them and talk through a little more in-depth in small groups. Again, 82 people came to the public workshop, or at least I did, I think one right here. Oh, and I apologize. It was 1,400 earlier. It was 1,300, almost 1,300 of the online team. So history of transportation for Danville and Hendricks County. Like most counties, when they were created, all roads led to the county roads. And that's what you're seeing today. All roads come to DFL in Hendricks County. So that works then. Today, you're seeing traffic patterns changing. People commuting, especially east and west, and even to the north and south, going to 70 and 74, and how that really changes how people move through the county itself, but also to DFL. Really the town of Danville has today not, you don't have traffic for all this time. You have it during your commuting times, which is really . So seeing that during those peak travel hours when you have a lot of traffic on your roads. And Danville has recognized this town leadership. They've had a traffic solutions committee that's been looking at this for some time. I'm really studying exploring, trying to come up with how can we address these issues. So this map may look familiar from earlier.

So what are your specific transportation challenges?

Specific to Danville. Your Main Street US 36 is the only east-west connection through town.

You have your disconnected

State Road 39 where it comes on to Main Street and 36 and it turns and how it is, especially truck traffic, making that lots of cars left, different things that causes, again, a compounded issue since it leads up to the 36 as well. You have congestion, which is general congestion, on Main Street, really from, like, Alice Park to Urban Street, and a bit beyond that, really, you know, something in your core of your community. You have truck congestion with the one-way traffic at the bridge, so you put the waste in, like how do they move to get through that bridge, but also at Main Street and 36, that intersection at Kroger as well. And then 200 North and 200 South, you really don't have that continuous connection. And that's really when you start looking I do want to point out, these are some comments From the online survey, and these were once you heard pretty early, that people just tend to win. So, you know, looking for that, to alleviate traffic on 36, how do you cross 36?

You know, could roundabouts help ease some of the traffic congestion at intersections?

Is 39 the current alignment? So maybe considering Matthew Rowe, as well so um and then again those uh the trash trucks uh near kroger and that intersection um and making sure you're not growing without the proper transportation so this is a map you probably recognize from either the online surveys or being here in person during the public workshop What we were trying to build out is a network. There is no one solution that is going to fix Danville's traffic issues. It has to be a network of smaller improvements that can be made so Danville residents are able to move throughout the community when maybe 36 and 39 are more congested. So this is the map that we showed earlier this year. You see that starting to build that network in the green outline there, specific projects are shown in blue. So you see like the 200 North connection projects making those connections all the way through to building that network there. the Twin Bridges Road, as we're calling it, for the trash trucks inside of each there. So what we started to hear is some of those solutions were very widely accepted, some were mixed, some just didn't have much support. So item J there, there just wasn't much, people didn't have much say about that, the straightening out the road.

That's something that could be done in the future, but not something we're going to continue to focus on throughout this process.

Item L is the Whitelick Creek Drive connection. So continuing that down to Broadway Street, making that connection. It just was not widely supported. So that project we're taking off the table for now. As well as item G, that's State Road 39 now and how you have the turns and how trucks have trouble making those turns. So we definitely heard that was a need, but what started to come out of that and the feedback was maybe 39's current alignment might not be the right alignment. So we'll continue to explore pushing that to Mackie and County Road 75 West. So you see that a little bit different route there. so this we're trying to show again these are the gaps in your network so in those circles you start to see where things just don't connect they almost get there they get close but they're just not connecting so how do we build that out so as part of the thoroughfare plan something you want to have is a thoroughfare plan This is what you can use as a policy base when you go to INDOT, when you work within the United List of the PO, which are partners for getting roadways built. So you have, typically you have what's called an arterial, a collector, and a local. Your arterial roads are shown in red here. Those are your heaviest traffic. They typically are moving the most cars, and that's what they're designed to do. So your 36 Main Street is already in arterial, keeping that near arterial. We did recommend 39 bumping up from a collector to a material as you you're seeing more and more traffic on that as things are happening to north of the envelope south of the envelope more cars are using that road so bumping that up allows you to pursue different improvements along that road especially with it being an indoor road as well and then your local roads are what's shown in black there and that's just getting to homes getting to places within the The dashed lines for each of those are those proposed connections. So those are new roads that don't exist today. So starting to make that connection and building out that network. So when you put that into this, you start to see how those connections are being made and how you can move now from one side of the community to the other, but you have multiple ways to get there instead of just one. All right, so with that,

And that's the best way to use other people's federal money to do it, which is going to be most cost-effective for the town. What is tricky about some of this, we'll talk about specific projects here in a minute that are kind of the shorter-term side of this. This is going to take years to build all this out. So one of the things I don't want everybody thinking lot of time effort and energy over many many years something like this probably is 10 to 20 years worth of effort to be able to build all these things out very frankly some of these projects that you're seeing are not even in the town's limit some of them are county projects some of them are under index jurisdiction so the real challenge here is that the best solutions in many cases to the problems that you're experiencing are controlled by somebody else And I know there's, I certainly heard it when we had the first meeting. I'm like, why can't we get more done? And it's because it's hard when you don't control all of those things. This is something the town will have to work on is working partnership with it, not working partnership with the county to be able to see some of these connections made over time. And that's just going to make a difference. When you have a network, what you have are options. means that if a development is proposed in an area where there's a line there, then you have to reserve that right away so that that space is protected into the future so that nothing is in the way. Because we don't want to take somebody's home to build a road project. We want to be able to do it where that land is open and do it the smart way that treats our neighbors fairly and with respect. And so we're trying to protect this for the long term by designating those areas that leaning behind what goes on there, that will really make a big difference. I just wanted to point that out before we jump into projects.

So looking at the network, how do you start to build that overall system? So really looking at a project, the goal should be, one project should be in fund design and build at all times as you build out this network. As Corey was saying, it's gonna take a lot of years to do that. So pursuing funding sources that could be TIF, impact fees, working with Indianapolis BMPO to get those grants. So constantly pursuing and pushing those projects. In design is really refining this from a line on a map and how does it actually get built? So taking, you know, how does, what's all the engineering that needs to go into this? What are the property owners we need to work with? What are the potential design solutions of the design of the actual street that we need to be considering? And then importantly, building that. So making sure a project is constantly in one of these phases is really important to keep the momentum going for Danville. So one of the projects that we consider low hanging fruits and the town is already working on is working on making making a connection from 200 East to Twin Bridges Road, which alleviates that a lot of use of trucks in that one-way bridge. It takes away a lot of the landfill trucks away from the 36th intersection and Main Street right at a river light, which has your highest amount of crashes within the community or incidences. So relocating that road, getting the trucks to use that road as well, takes away some strain that's already being experienced at that intersection. Another one is reducing the stress on main streets in between urban and cross streets. So looking at your daily traffic count, the numbers there, we found quite a few people are finding ways to get around Danville already. So they're coming on either main street or 36, going north on 200 east. cutting over and going up 100 north to the small town and getting over to 39 is what they're doing. So what would happen if you start making that connection on 200 north and making that even more convenient, having people move around Danville? Again, this would be more local streets or collectors, It wouldn't necessarily be a bypass, as you would say, but this is a route that alleviates that strain in the downtown itself. It allows cars to move where they're going already. Another one is the Lincoln Street connection. This is taking traffic from the Kroger, that intersection, bringing it over on the south side to Lincoln Street. and lining that up at Cartersburg and Lincoln. So again, that allows local traffic to move on the street. Again, this would not be something Semites would take because it just wouldn't make sense for them, but it'd bring them over to Lincoln Street and then you can continue on going to maybe the different neighborhoods so they can get all the way over to Mackey and eventually we'd like to see that connection to 200 West. So again, diverting traffic off of Main Street and reducing that strain. We see a lot of cars coming up here as you guys I'm sure well know.

What are the orange boxes?

That is your corporate limits, your current limits.

They have an island in the middle of the town?

Yeah. The other one is working on increasing traffic controls. So within the downtown itself, all the lights or intersections on Main Street, there might be small improvements that can be made that have a big impact. So exploring, and this takes further exploration than just us making these suggestions. So possibly adding a turn lane on Tennessee. What does that do when we start seeing the amount of cars that are making that turn already? Does that help alleviate some of the strain at that particular intersection? of Washington Street, just reconfiguring those lanes a bit, what impacts could that have? And all of this is done with INDOT because obviously this is INDOT's road, so it's that partnership working with them. But these particular streets, could these small improvements help have a bigger impact here? The benefits of Just, you know, pushing cars to lower-value streets. But again, it's working within that overall to do that study on those particular intersections.

The big one to mention there is the, the question is cross-street. Because cross-street is 39, and there's, I see some nodding to the heads already on this one. But that is just, that's an unsignalized intersection. past Tennessee it's backing traffic up the other direction well past urban to Mackie and that's just a real concern at this point as to why is there not a signal there we just really think that you need to look at this whole system of signals in your downtown and really optimize it the signal timing is pretty good actually for what it should be it's not optimal it's not perfect but it's intersection without a signal, has a tremendous amount of truck traffic on it, and one truck slows everything down for a while. On the flip side, you've got signals at places like Jefferson, which only has a few hundred cars a day, and so there's a rethinking of this that could help. That alone's not going to solve the problem. The other part of this, though, in this whole network, is this section between Urban Street 39 and back to Cross Street. Because what you have in that section is you have both 39 traffic and you have 36 traffic overlapping each other. And that stacking of traffic creates a real issue. And so we'll talk about some ideas for that here in a little bit. I don't think that any of these are necessarily earth shattering ideas. allows you to do is now say hey endot it's not just you know mark and lisa and will saying this is an issue but we had 1300 residents come out and tell us it was an issue we had 100 people show up in public meetings and there's some weight behind it because you guys showed up here you cared enough to show up and say hey this is important that we fix these issues so that's how we fund projects unless we've done this, and they don't make changes unless they know the community's behind it. That's why this process is so important.

And to start thinking further into the future, Here, Corey brought this up with those dashed lines, like the 150 North. Start reserving that right-of-way today as projects come in. So we're not necessarily then taking someone's home in 10 years or even five years. That you're looking at that network and that overall system as you want to build it out. And then an important one is start building your funding sources. There's no one funding source that's gonna cover these projects or even one project. You're gonna have to build and layer in Those different sources. So that could be, you know, grant funding with Indianapolis and VO. But typically there's match dollars there, too. So how can you raise that at a local level? That could be done through TIF districts, impact fees, different ways to build your capital. to get these projects implemented. So it's not just on current residents as well. It's also looking at the future growth potential and what did you build for the future there.

Something to add to this as we talk about things like impact fees and TIF districts. I know anytime you bring up a tax situation, it's not popular. The question is, how do you use growth to pay for growth? If we don't find mechanisms like impact fees or TIF that takes the new revenues that come in from business and new development and uses that revenue to pay for the improvements that those necessitate, then that calls on just everyday taxpayers to pay for that that have already been here. So what we're trying to look for is that is happening for new homes you got to look and see which those are the best for you impact fees know the council this in the past it's never popular to talk about things like this so I say all this very much recognizing you have to find out what's best for you and you have to decide if that's the best way to do it but you've got to find a paid way to pay for these improvements that is fair to the community fair to your residents So some of that's gonna be really important as a really critical conversation coming out of this as to the next step. What does that look like to be important?

All right. And then next is really planning your regional connectivity. So working with the county, working with other communities, working with NDOT especially on the 039 realignment. Just because we may suggest it, as a community may be like yes we support that there's still it's we gotta work with INDOT to get that alignment make sure it works with their regional network as well so that's going to take some time overall to get that done but the important part is is now town leadership if this gets carried through if it's supported by residents we support this and we want you guys to consider potentially realigning.

Can you flip back to the map that shows that just to make sure that we've kind of explained that. So one of the challenges with 39 is it comes up and then it's 39, 36 run parallel for a little bit and some of your most congested areas. One of the things that we've heard consistently through this process is Now it's just an intersection. This needs study. This is not a short-term improvement. This takes a longer-term look. There's an historical understanding. You can not pursue this and look at it at one point. This still needs more study. it's not necessarily going to move forward because it's not on the end-off's radar right now. One of the questions we had about this section has been, how does this impact schools? Because this does go by the school campus. And I think there's some real fair concerns about that. One of the things that we've talked about with the steering committee that the steering committee has said is, really safe for our kids by designing it the right way and so there's there is yes there is a fair concern that we need to look at but there is a way to do it that really benefits the community as well and you turn that into a real asset to have those roads around your schools be as safe as they possibly can be i believe with that

just add if you have any questions about the overall network system for the planning team we're happy to answer those like we said we do have boards to look at we can talk more in depth about specific projects maybe one on one or more in a small group but we welcome any questions just want to say thank you

for your attention on this. We will answer questions. If there's general questions, we can try to answer those, but I think with it being live and such, it would probably be easier to just do one-on-ones. But if there's any general questions and clarifications, we can handle those first. We're going to stick around here for a while. The materials are up here. We'll have the big map up on here as well. Feel free to talk to Will or Lisa or Mark But we're also around here as well to answer any questions that you have, so thank you.