By VICKI URBANIK

The mission of a new regional committee calls for “fostering a non-motorized culture,” which might be no simple task in a society infatuated with cars, trucks and SUVs.

But Mitch Barloga, a planner with the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission, said he sees momentum for the goal of getting more people to walk and bike and for building a widespread trail system so that people can do so safely.

At last week’s meeting of NIRPC’s Ped & Pedal Committee, Barloga relayed one example of progress: LaPorte County officials planning a reconstruction of Johnson Road linking LaPorte with Michigan City have expressed support for incorporating an off-road trail along the road.

Barloga urged other Ped & Pedal committee members to keep up to date with similar road projects, so that the committee can help the communities include a pedestrian trail in the project as well as review and apply for grants to make it happen.

The Ped & Pedal Committee is made up of representatives from Porter, Lake and LaPorte counties and is the first NIRPC committee specifically devoted to pedestrian and bicycling issues. It held its second meeting last week, following the adoption by NIRPC of a regional pedestrian and bicycle plan earlier this year.

That plan identifies current and future regional trails and includes a variety of goals, such as promoting regional trail coordination and encouraging bike and pedestrian access to and from all transit facilities.

In Porter County, the high-priority trails identified in the plan are the Calumet Trail Corridor along the Northern Indiana Public Service Co. easement; the Prairie-Duneland Trail Corridor from the Lake/Porter County Line east to Chesterton, with an upcoming segment in Porter linking with the Calumet Trail; the Iron Horse Heritage Trail Corridor extending from Prairie Duneland to the county line; and the Grand Calumet/Marquette and Little Calumet corridors, two Lake County projects that end in the Portage/Burns Harbor area.

Three medium-priority trails in Porter County are identified: the Meridian Road corridor linking Valparaiso with Chesterton; the Wheeler corridor linking Hobart to Valparaiso; the S.R. 2/Westville trail extending from Valparaiso to LaPorte; and the Winfield corridor through south Porter County.

The plan also includes five low-priority Porter County corridors: the Kankakee River Trail, the C&O corridor, the Wabash corridor from the end of the Iron Horse Trail in Chesterton to Westville; a western section of the S.R. 2 trail; the Baums Bridge Road corridor; and a south county portion of the American Discovery Trail.

The committee last week discussed a matrix for carrying out the goals in the 2005 plan. The matrix sets different duties of the committee, as well as NIRPC and a citizens group known as C4 (Calumet Citizens for Connecting Communities). For example, under the objective “coordinate bicycle and pedestrian planning at all levels of government,” the matrix calls for the Ped & Pedal Committee to provide a forum for preservation and acquisition of rail lines, for NIRPC to prepare materials and facilitate meetings, and for C4 to lobby legislators.

The Ped & Pedal Committee agreed last week to form a subcommittee to develop criteria to rank each corridor in the plan. Barloga said the ranking will not give any project greater weight for grant purposes, but will merely be used as a tool when funding becomes available.

For example, he noted that U.S. Rep. Chris Chocola, who represents the 2nd congressional district, has many medium-priority trails in his district. But he can use the committee’s trail ranking to help determine where to target money that he brings home for local projects.

Another initiative that the committee will promote in the region is a bike registration program, which would help police identify stolen bikes and return them to their appropriate owners.

Another initiative is to encourage communities to host “bike to work” days during the national bike month in May.

Ped & Pedal Committee Chair Chuck Gardiner said the more communities that participate in the bike days, the better. In his own town of Munster, he said plans are underway not for a bike to work day, but a “bike to soccer” day, in which families will be encouraged to bike to soccer games.

The committee agreed to place on next month’s agenda a presentation about the new Valparaiso pathways project, which proposes a series of connections within and extending outside of the city. The project just received park board approval and will be presented next to the city’s plan commission, said committee member Carol Costakis of the Valparaiso parks department.

Costakis said the project began under former mayor David Butterfield and integrated into current Mayor Jon Costas‚ Fit City Initiative. She emphasized that instead of just being a park department project, the program is a citywide endeavor. She said as an example, if a new subdivision is proposed in an area that the plan identifies as a pathway, the developer will have to meet criteria for a new walkway.

Barloga praised the Valparaiso project as “phenomenal” and one that the Ped & Pedal Committee encourages from all communities.

The next meeting of the Ped & Pedal Committee is set for April 21 at 1:30 p.m. at NIRPC.

Posted 3/28/2005