The intersection of Washington Street and Hamblen Drive is circled on the map in red.
Incidents
July 25, 2022 / Pedestrian Death (FCRB Reviewed / Master Record: 904078947)
September 7, 2022 / Pedestrian Death (FCRB Reviewed / Master Record: 904109983)
October 4, 2022 / Pedestrian Death (FCRB Reviewed / Master Record: 904132778)
Two other non-death Pedestrian incidents since 2015
Washington Street is part of the High-Injury network, and possibly the reason for its creation. Initially, I was going to completely avoid Washington Street because of the Blue Line project starting next spring. However, this segment of Washington Street is not included in that project. More on that in the Long-Term section below.
Image A / Indy MPO crash data of this area from 2015 thru May 2024. Red dot is vehicle. Blue dot is pedestrian. Green dot is cyclist. Dark red outline is a death.
What does the Fatal Crash Review Board say?
The Fatal Crash Review Board says this intersection is INDOT's problem. They claim to have notified INDOT about the issues and recommended the development of a vulnerable road user network. INDOT is responsible for Washington Street west of 465, but I'm not sure I care who actually fixes it.
Immediate Term Changes
Folks, I bring this area to your attention because the attention is needed. This stretch of Washington Street was royally screwed over when the Blue Line decided to turn south and use the interstate to get to the airport instead. Since the original plans included this segment, this area has been deferring maintenance for almost a decade. The results are a desperate situation.
Image B / Take a look at crash data for this segment that will no longer be getting the Blue Line
Let's zoom in on our intersection. This is a strange one. There's no stop light. Hamblen is a dead end that only accesses a neighborhood of about 30 houses. There's a bus stop on the corner and a gas station with a liquor store on the south side of the street. But there's a huge volume of incidents in this immediate area.
First thing you notice is there is zero pedestrian infrastructure. No sidewalks. No crosswalks. Nothing. You can see from the incidents that people are on foot despite the lack of infrastructure (Image A).
Next, there's too much pavement. Twelve foot lanes are for fast moving traffic where pedestrians aren't present, but Indianapolis has them everywhere. It's a huge problem. A good temporary solution is to add some squeeze points. However, these can be hard to place in a center turn lane with tons of driver access points on both sides of the road. We saw the setup below on 71st Street, and a similar idea in use on the tactical project on 10th Street.
Image C / These would be placed every 50-100 yards and could easily be adjusted if needed.
Long Term Changes
If you haven't read the welcome post, please go back and read about the very real constraints the city is indefinitely facing. Like many of our sprawled areas outside of 465, this is a location where big investments aren't coming. We need to be smart when we get the opportunity to work in these areas (check out Tiered Development on the Resources page). There are two things I would focus on:
Allow pedestrians and cyclists to exist.
Don't create infrastructure where drivers can reach dangerous speeds.
Since INDOT is in charge of this segment, I think we already have a good idea of what they would do with this corridor. Check out the current 2024 construction project over on the east side on Pendleton Pike (external link to INDOT project summary). They're replacing the center turn lane with a median. This project will likely make the area safer for drivers, but it's not going to be much of an improvement for pedestrians.
Disclaimer! This segment of Washington Street intersects 465 and High School Road. Those are two serious problems for peds/bikes that we're not focused on here. A roundabout at High School Road would be amazing, but INDOT is not in the habit of investing in Marion County unless an interstate is involved.
THE PLAN!
Create a transition zone from US 40 to Washington Street
Add mixed-use path on north side of street that connects to final Blue Line stop at Holt.
Add pedestrian islands where popular crossings occur.
Gain space for pedestrians/bikes by reducing lane widths.
In 2027, the Blue Line project should be complete at Holt Road. This is about 4.5 miles east from our intersection. The County Line is about 2 miles west of our intersection and that's where Washington Street becomes US 40, a divided highway. Currently, we are not successfully transitioning between those two styles of traversal, and we need to find a better way.
So how do we start this transition into the city? One big focus on this project is lane width. Basically, we're going to give this corridor a road diet without taking any lanes away. How is that possible? Thank the people that decided lanes needed to be 12 feet wide a few decades ago. We've got five 12 foot lanes that could all be 10 foot lanes. That gives us 10 feet of space back!
The next focus of this project is sight lines. Like, 71st Street from our previous post, Washington Street has sight lines that end at the horizon. That's bad! We need trees, flags, SOMETHING to break up the sight lines.
Our plan is definitely similar to the Pendleton Pike plan mentioned above, but our differentiator is that we're also creating space for pedestrians and cyclists. The updated layout of the corridor is below. By right sizing the travel lanes, we created ten extra feet of space on the north side of the road that we're turning over to pedestrians and bikes.
Image E / Plan for the corridor with the current layout on the right edge for comparison.
But why this layout instead of building sidewalks? Laying new sidewalks is slightly more than twice the cost of resurfacing. What we're proposing here can basically be done in parallel with a resurfacing project:
Resurface the existing corridor.
Finish it off with new paint and add our parking barriers with flex posts to protect the new lane.
You could even add some sparkle to the newly created lane.
At our problem intersection, we're adding a median that will better protect all users and accomplish a few different things:
Provides a pedestrian island for a new crosswalk.
Eliminates a bunch of driver-on-driver conflict points by forcing folks to make left turns at designated locations instead of wherever they like.
Creates space for trees. These trees are a critical signal for drivers that this is not a place for speed.
Even though only one location is a designated crosswalk, the median provides a refuge if folks choose to cross in other places. We could even add a hawk signal at the crosswalk to encourage folks to use that location.
The white bars in the median are additional protection that would be a permanent version of jersey barriers. They're angled to push drivers back into their correct lanes when struck and they're on top of our curb. They could be decorated and would also include high-vis features.
Some driver access points have also been reconfigured. The middle driveway for the gas station and "ATM" (LOL if you know what this is) was duplicative. Removing it gives us our safest possible crossing point. The motel across the street also lost the ability to turn left out of their main driveway, but you can see that they can still access a left turn by using Hamblen. Same thing for the business at 8018, but they also have a second driveway where they would still be able to turn left.
Image F / A closer look at our problem area
Council District
District 17 starts at Belmont Avenue and stretches to the western county line. The northern border is some railroad tracks just south of Rockville Road and the southern border is Troy Avenue. Some airport properties are in this district, but the terminal is not.
Jared Evans is the representative for District 17
Joined council in 2016 and could be reelected/challenged in 2027
I truly do not care what political party a City Councilor is affiliated with, so that will not be listed in these posts. Any person can be an ally or an adversary in this fight, as safety advocates have already discovered.
Contact Jared Evans: 200 E. Washington St., Suite T441 Indianapolis, IN 46204 317.327.4242 |  |
Other Involved Districts
Since this location is under the purview of INDOT, it might be worthwhile to also contact your State Congressperson and State Senator.
This area is in Indiana House District 91 and Robert Behning is your State Congressperson.
Contact Robert Behning: 200 W. Washington Street Indianapolis, IN 46204 800-382-984 |  |
This area is in Indiana Senate District 35 and Michael Young is your State Senator.
Contact Michael Young: 200 W. Washington Street Indianapolis, IN 46204 800-382-9467 |  |