Nearly two years after being approached by a citizen group seeking safer “paths for people,” the Nashville Town Council is taking steps to create a plan.

At the November council meeting, council member Anna Hofstetter and strategic direction adviser Dax Norton said they had met with grant writers from ARa about developing a “bicycle and pedestrian master plan.” It would map out routes for walkers, runners, bicyclists and other non-motorized transport throughout town — routes that exist now and could be built in the future. The plan would serve as a foundation for the town to apply for other grants to build new trails and walkways, and include design guidelines, cost estimates and priorities, Norton said.

The town council is expected to discuss this concept more at a strategic planning meeting on Thursday, Dec. 12, starting at 6:30 p.m. at Town Hall. All are welcome to attend.

The council wants citizen involvement in this process, so Norton’s suggestion was for the council to create an ad-hoc Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Commission. That group would be the steering committee charged with overseeing the plan’s progress and completion, and it also could advise the council on policy, he said.

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“If the council agrees to move forward with this process to complete the plan during the strategy workshop on the 12th, I suggest that they create the committee via ordinance during their regular meeting in December and seek applicants to sit on the committee immediately,” he said. The council’s regular December meeting will be Thursday, Dec. 19 at 6:30.

The cost to do a plan such as this was estimated at $45,000 to $50,000. Planning grants are available from the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs or the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, but other sources also may be out there. The town’s grant writers are looking into those, Norton said.

The town would need to do a “local match” for those grants, so creating the plan would cost the town about $4,000 to $12,000, Norton estimated.

The town has record of at least six pedestrians being hit within town limits in the past four years, including two hit just last month. One strike, in September 2017, was fatal, killing 28-year-old James “David” Sturgeon of Brown County as he crossed State Road 46 in the dark near the McDonald’s stoplight. Another, which occurred in the dark and rain in November 2015, seriously injured 69-year-old Veada Hewitt of Indianapolis as she was trying to cross Van Buren Street at Franklin Street.

In November 2018, a 13-year-old Brown County girl was injured while crossing Van Buren in a crosswalk near the BP station. The driver had gone around backed-up traffic that had stopped for her.

Last month, on Nov. 16, two pedestrians from Louisville were hit “at a very slow rate of speed” in a crosswalk on Van Buren at Main Street by a local driver. They were not injured, police said.

“Your crosswalks are bad. I’m just going to say it,” Norton told the council at the November meeting.

At least four current or former town employees also have admitted to either hitting or nearly hitting pedestrians or skateboarders in town, Norton being one of those drivers — though a witness to his incident said it looked like the person purposely jumped into traffic.

Hewitt’s sister, Vickie Reynolds, wrote a lengthy letter to the editor in the Nov. 27, 2019 issue of the Brown County Democrat, asking the town to think about what it could do to increase pedestrian safety, like fixing sidewalks, adding lighting, drawing attention to crosswalks and slowing drivers down.

The council has often talked about a need for flashing lights or some other method of notifying drivers on State Road 135/Van Buren that they’re going too fast coming into town, especially as they come off the hills from Bean Blossom or Bloomington. However, something like that would have to have the approval of the Indiana Department of Transportation, as 135/Van Buren Street is a state road.

The hope is for this bicycle and pedestrian master plan to address the speed and crosswalk issues as well, Hofstetter said.

Hofstetter had approached the town council in February 2018, when she was a private citizen, as a member of the grassroots group BC Paths for People. It was formed in response to Sturgeon’s death, to urge the town to create a sidewalk along State Road 46 East so that people wouldn’t walk along the shoulder of the highway anymore.

The Salt Creek Trail does connect downtown Nashville with the Hawthorne Drive area where McDonald’s and the IGA are, avoiding 46 traffic, but it runs through the woods and is not lit.

The council was not able to make any progress on the 46 trail idea at that time, citing a lack of funding.

Norton told the council at the Nov. 21 meeting that in a town the size of Nashville, he’d expect to see $4 to $5 million worth of pathway projects that could be done over 20 years or so. The plan would map out priorities in about five-year increments.

The document also could include regional strategies, like seeing if Bartholomew or Monroe counties had any plans to extend their trail systems toward Brown County, or tapping into the state’s plans for future bicycle routes which could already be sketched through here.

“It’s a great document to have, so when you apply for Next Level Trails funding, if you have this plan, I guarantee when you take it to the state, they’re going to like it,” Norton said.