A plan to close Furnessville Road for a rerouted Calumet Trail has neighbors concerned about driving safely elsewhere, and they told officials as much during a Tuesday meeting about the plan.
They would rather be able to drive north to U.S. 12 than go south to U.S. 20. “I have sat at Highway 20 for five to 10 minutes before I could even make a right hand turn,” one resident said.
Traffic on U.S. 20 typically is much faster than the posted 55 mph speed limit, residents said.
Chris Pergiel, acting superintendent of Indiana Dunes National Park, drives that way often. “People blow by me at 75, 80 mph all the time,” he said.
“You’re sending us to very dangerous intersections,” one resident said. “I think the project’s great. I just don’t want to lose our access.”
Furnessville Road also gets fast traffic, said Rafi Wilkinson, the park’s outdoor recreation planner. “The average speed was more than twice the legal limit,” he said. There were 153 traffic stops on the park-owned road between 2015 and 2022, Wilkinson said. The average speed was 48 mph; the maximum speed was 67 mph. The posted speed limit is 25 mph.
Porter County and the National Park Service are proposing to reconfigure the trail to remove it from NIPSCO’s property so the trail won’t have to be repaved whenever NIPSCO works on the pipeline under the existing trail.
The proposed route uses a variety of existing roads, abandoned roads and trails. The trail would be paved with a maximum grade of 5% to become ADA-compliant.
The new trail, part of the Marquette Greenway, will route users though some of the most scenic areas in Indiana Dunes National Park. The Marquette Greenway, stretching from Illinois to Michigan, “is about a $110 million regional investment,” Wilkinson said. “It’s something we’ve wanted now for more than 40 years,” he said.
“There’s no comparison between the current Calumet Trail and what it will be,” Pergiel said. “We’re going from a dirt local trail to a state line to state line trail.”
Calumet Trail is often unusable because of wetlands and flooding. “There’s a woman who broke her arm earlier this year in a puddle on her bike,” Wilkinson said.
A bike rider at Tuesday’s public hearing at the Indiana Dunes Visitor Center told of his tire popping off because of large gravel NIPSCO used on the trail. He acknowledged the existing muddy conditions. “I rode the Calumet Trail a lot,” he said. “You had a brown stripe on your back when you were done.”
David Hawk, who lives on Veden Road near Furnessville Road, has been hiking through that area for decades. “You have these hiking trails that could easily be used, developed and avoid closing down Furnessville Road,” he said.
“A lot of older folks who want to have access to the national park can get in their cars and drive one of the most scenic stretches of the park” on Furnessville Road, Hawk said.
“It’s a treasure we have that should never be closed,” he said.
“We don’t have our minds made up,” Pergiel said. After public comment ends, the proposal goes up the chain of command at the National Park Service for a series of reviews.
The Calumet Trail rebuild is being done in three sections and would be completed at the end of next year or early 2025, said Robert Thompson, the county’s outgoing director of development and stormwater management. A total of $8.9 million in federal dollars is planned for the Calumet Trail’s three sections.
Public comment on the proposal ends Oct. 18. The environmental assessment can be viewed and comments made at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/indumgtcalumet.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
