The Northern Hamilton County Chamber of Commerce (NHCCC) met at the Hamilton North Public Library, 209 W. Brinton St., Cicero, on Thursday to offer attendees an opportunity to learn about the various infrastructure improvements both planned and underway for U.S. 31.
Representatives of Congresswoman Victoria Spartz and U.S. Senator Todd Young attended with the near-capacity crowd.
Speakers included Jennifer Beck, senior project manager for the Greenville District for the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT). Beck spoke about various upcoming projects along U.S. 31. Information on all of them, including a map detailing projects for the next five years, can be found online at in.gov/indsot.
Some of Beck’s points of discussion included:
- The 276th Street project has been bid and construction has started with temporary widening of U.S. 31 and utility relocation to begin soon.
- 216th Street will become a cul-de-sac while 266th Street will become an overpass. There will be a new access road on the east side of U.S. 31 between 226th and 236th streets.
- 246th and 256th streets will become cul-de-sacs.
- The 236th Street overpass is in the process of construction.
- A house tied to the Underground Railroad and listed on the National Register of Historic Places will be relocated, possibly to Conner Prairie.
- 276th Street should be completed in 2023.
- West of U.S. 31, 276th Street will be closed soon. The east portion will be closed in 2023. Access to Reynolds Farm Equipment will be off U.S. 31.
- Sheridan should have a new roundabout at the intersection of Highway 47 and State Road 38 on the southeast side of town.
- The Monon Trail in the Sheridan area has also been funded for expansion. Its intersection with the road will be marked with people-activated yellow flashing lights.
- State Road 37 will be resurfaced north of Strawtown and State Road 13. Strawtown Avenue will have a roundabout in place by 2026.
- INDOT is willing to work with businesses on signage for road closures.
- The on-ramp to U.S. 31 from State Road 38 should be open next week.
Duke Energy Government and Community Relations Liaison Dagny Zupin spoke about various upgrades coming to the area, including the installation of automatic sensors which will speed up the detection of defects and pinpoint outages much faster.
“In 2016, we proposed a plan to reduce the risk of power outages on our system through measures such as replacing aging infrastructure,” Zupin said. “We upgraded or replaced hundreds of utility poles and overhead and underground power lines. We’ve improved hundreds of substations which convert voltage for use by customers. Overall, this is about creating a more reliable, smarter system that helps prevent problems that may cause an outage and gets the lights back on sooner when problems do occur.”
Duke encourages you to add your cell number at duke-energy.com/outages/alerts in order to receive timely information when outages occur.