Infrastructure

Ask The Mayor: Crawfordsville's Todd Barton On City Roadways, Starbucks Grand Opening

By • Jul 25, 2019
Stan Jastrzebski / WBAA News

Montgomery County is searching for ways to improve travel and roadways, and Crawfordsville is at the center of that discussion. Intercity train travel took a hit late last month with the loss of the Hoosier State Line. So how is Crawfordsville working to improve transportation and travel for residents?

Misplaced Transparency Worries Disrupt Montgomery Co. Thoroughfare Meeting

By • Jul 23, 2019
Courtesy: Montgomery County

A meeting to discuss an addition to the Montgomery County Comprehensive Plan was disrupted Monday night due to questions of transparency. The addition would cover road and infrastructure development.

Montgomery County officials and HWC Engineering scheduled the Monday meeting to gather public input.

Holcomb Officially Launches 2020 Re-election Campaign

By Brandon Smith • Jul 15, 2019

Gov. Eric Holcomb leaned heavily into basketball references as he launched his re-election bid Saturday at the Hoosier Gym, where the movie "Hoosiers" filmed.

Scooters Return To West Lafayette With New Regulation

By Chloe Weber • May 29, 2019
Julia Zuchkov / Department of Development

 

Electric scooters will make a return to Greater Lafayette come late June, but with greater restrictions on where they can be parked and driven, as well as how many there will be.

Scooter companies Spin and Gotcha -- based in San Francisco and South Carolina -- have been approved to bring in their own scooters in the wake of Bird scooters flying the coop. City leaders and many citizens complained Bird had flooded the market late last year and West Lafayette economic development aide Julia Zuchkov says the city doesn’t want to be overwhelmed again.

Jeffersonville Port Invests In Infrastructure, Seeks New Tenants

By Annie Ropeik • Oct 26, 2017
The Port of Indiana-Jeffersonville is a manufacturing and distribution hub for trains, trucks and barges on the Ohio River. (Annie Ropeik/IPB News)

The first stop in our series on the Ports of Indiana was Burns Harbor, an international maritime facility in the heart of steel country. Four hours down Interstate 65, the Port of Jeffersonville is less a port and more a manufacturing hub that happens to be on the Ohio River.

For the next part of our series, Indiana Public Broadcasting’s Annie Ropeik reports Jeffersonville is pushing ahead with expansions to cement its place in the Midwest industrial corridor.

At Indiana’s Burns Harbor Port, Steel And Water Remain King

By Annie Ropeik • Oct 18, 2017
The 84-foot tugboat Arizona, left, waits to help the 656-foot bulk carrier Federal Danube, right, turn around at its berth in the Port of Indiana-Burns Harbor. (Annie Ropeik/IPB News)

Indiana’s ports move millions of tons each year of the stuff that’s made and used at Midwest factories, including steel, grains and coal. The three ports – one on Lake Michigan and two on the Ohio River – connect Indiana to the national and global economies, and each has to find its own ways to keep up with change.

For the first part of a three-part series, we visited the Port of Indiana-Burns Harbor to see how it’s secured its place in the steel industry.

State Inks Agreement To Study Purchase Of New Ohio River Port Site

By Annie Ropeik • Sep 22, 2017
This former coal plant site in Lawrenceburg, on the Ohio River, could become Indiana's next port. (Photo courtesy of Ports of Indiana)

Indiana has agreed to buy Ohio River-front land in Lawrenceburg that could house the state’s fourth port.

The state has been considering using the 725 acres in southeast Indiana as its next port facility for nearly a year.

Now, it’s inked an agreement to purchase the site, pending further study. Gov. Eric Holcomb’s office says the agreement will let port officials “begin studies to examine the economic and environmental viability of the parcel.”

Domestic Coal Shipments Boost Indiana's Ports For Start Of 2017

By Annie Ropeik • Aug 3, 2017
A neutrino detector called ICARUS is offloaded at Indiana's Burns Harbor en route to Fermilab in Illinois. (Courtesy CERN and Ports of Indiana)

Indiana’s three ports had their second-best start to the year ever in 2017.

Burns Harbor, Mt. Vernon and Jeffersonville moved 19 percent more cargo in the first six months of this year than at the same time in 2016 – 5.7 million tons overall.

Almost two-thirds of that went through the southwest port of Mt. Vernon, in the form of bulk cargoes – things like coal, ethanol, fertilizer and minerals, which get transferred between railcars, river barges and trucks.

State Ends Fiscal Year With Small Surplus, Healthy Reserve

By Drew Daudelin • Jul 19, 2017
Revenue from sales and corporate taxes did better than expected, but individual income taxes came in slightly lower than the most recent forecast.

Indiana closed its fiscal year – which ended on June 30th – with a budget surplus of $42 million.

The state also closed with a reserve of $1.77 billion. That’s about $400 million less than the year before.

Office of Management and Budget Director Micah Vincent says the decline was caused by the state’s new long-term road funding plan.

Ask The Mayor: Crawfordsville's Todd Barton On Community, Rail Crossings

By • May 25, 2017
Stan Jastrzebski / WBAA News

When, earlier this week, a train derailed in downtown Crawfordsville, it brought to a head some of the concerns Mayor Todd Barton has lodged with the railroads that crisscross his city.

Sure, the tracks caused regular traffic jams before, and city leaders have long hoped for a railroad relocation project, but was this week’s incident the locomotive that broke the camel’s back?

We talk about that incident on this week’s Ask The Mayor program.

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