Nearly a decade ago, the state of Indiana launched a grand plan to put hiking and biking trails within easy reach of every Indiana resident.
Dubbed “Hoosiers on the Move,” the effort tapped into millions of public and private dollars to expand the trail system to 3,500 miles of paved pathways winding through scenic parks, along rushing rivers, and past lush farm fields.
As of this summer, more than 90 percent of Indiana residents live within a 5-mile drive of a recreational trail. The initiative has been deemed a success.
That outcome, however, is in jeopardy. The problem, detailed before a group of Indiana lawmakers last week, is that despite growing use and demand for the trails, little money exists to maintain them.
In March, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed the Recreational Trail Maintenance Fund into law, creating a mechanism for dollars to flow into the upkeep and repair of trails patronized by thousands of Hoosier hikers and bikers.
The amount allocated to the fund — zero.
Funding steps
“There’s no doubt of the significance and importance of these trails and the public interest in them is huge,” said Rep. Don Lehe, R-Brookston, who chairs a legislative study committee looking into the issue. “But it all boils down to dollars.”
Lehe and other members of the Interim Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources have been charged with developing a plan to put money into the new trails maintenance fund.
It won’t be easy. As state revenues are falling below projections, state budget officials are tightening fiscal belts. And the Republican-controlled Legislature seems wary of creating a new tax.
Two ideas, floated informally among lawmakers, have garnered little support.
One, similar to a program in Michigan, involves levying a 10-cent bottle deposit fee on every soft drink sold in Indiana with the unclaimed deposits to be used for trail maintenance. The other idea, akin to Illinois’ bicycle license fee that helps pay for trails, was to add a $25 fee to the price of a new bike.
Neither proposal had legs.
A “user fee,” comparable to a pass that state park visitors purchase, has been considered, but questioned as impractical. Unlike the state parks, where there’s a single entrance or two, users of the recreational trails can hop on at multiple points.
“We’ve got to come up with something fair and equitable and doable,” said Rep. Alan Morrison, R-Terre Haute, an avid supporter and user of the recreational trails in his community. “So far, we haven’t figured out what that is.”
Morrison, who sits on the legislative committee, invited fellow members to conduct last week’s hearing on trail maintenance on the campus of Indiana State University at Terre Haute.
He also went with them on an airboat ride on the Wabash River. There, they got an up-close view of how trails are being used to reconnect the city with the river to boost economic development and improve quality of place.
“In Indiana, we’re always looking for ways to keep and attract talented people, especially young, talented people,” Morrison. “The recreational trails, as popular as they are, are part of the answer.”
Stalled momentum
The committee heard from a range of trail supporters, including Mitch Barloga, an Indiana Greenways Foundation board member and the transportation director for the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission. He oversees a network of trails in Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties that is growing by almost 20 miles a year, due to demand from joggers, hikers and cyclists.
Some local communities have tapped into their road funds, allocated by the state from dwindling gas tax revenues, to do some repair work. But that money also has to go for local streets and highways, and there’s not enough to go around.
“The demand for new trails is so high, but we can’t keep up with maintenance of our existing trails,” Barloga said.
He and others told committee members that the yearly cost of maintaining a mile of paved trail averages about $4,000, translating to a $14-million annual need for the state’s existing trails.
That’s more than non-profit organizations, such as the Indiana Greenways Foundation, can afford. Among their worries: As older trails deteriorate, they can be more costly to fix than a damaged highway, since a trail may be located in an area impossible to access with typical road equipment.
For years, there’s been money from the Federal Highway Administration, through the Indiana Department of Transportation, to leverage privately donated dollars to build recreational trails.
That’s how the Covered Bridge Gateway Trails Association got a $5,000 grant to start building a 10-mile hiking and biking trail in Parke County, connecting two small towns, Rosedale and Rockville, through one of the prettiest parts of western Indiana.
But Parke County Commissioner Jim Meese worries the trail plan may crumble without money from the state for maintenance. He’s wary of taking on an obligation for taxpayers in his small, rural county that’s dependent on tourism.
“The real concern is what’s going to happen in the future,” Meese said, adding: “We can’t pay for our road maintenance as-is.”
Other issues were brought before the committee, as well, including disputes over property rights along trails still in the planning. In addition, Amy Cornell of the Indiana Farm Bureau asked lawmakers to build extra dollars into the maintenance fund to cover damage, liability insurance and unforeseen costs that may be borne by farmers whose property abuts a trail.
“The users of trails don’t always stay on the trails,” she said. “They trespass on adjacent land and problems can arise from that.”
The funding dilemma worries trail-lovers like Teresa Inman, whose been working to start a trail system to connect the small towns of Portland, Redkey and Dunkirk in rural Jay County.
She drove three hours to testify at the hearing, telling legislators that trails were critical to the health of communities, big and small.
“Once my children left for college, I wondered, how am I ever going to get them back to Jay County?” she said.
She’s convinced recreational trails may be part of the answer, but they come with a cost. “In small towns like mine, they just don’t know where to pull money from to maintain them,” she said.