INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) - A million people hit the Monon Trail each year and soon it will feel a bit more spacious.
There's a plan in the works to widen the path by several feet and repave it for the first time in its 21-year history.
This is all planned for the Indianapolis' ten-mile portion of the trail, which runs from 10th Street to 96th Street.
Indy Parks spokesperson Ronnetta Spalding said plans call for widening the trail by four feet, from 12 feet across to 16 feet.
Spalding said it's time. As the trail has grown in popularity, it's also become jam-packed in peak season.
She said they were still in the initial planning stages, "so I think it's super early to pinpoint the timeline but we know it will be completed by 2020."
She also said it wouldn't be done in phases.
While Spalding didn't have an estimated cost, she said the improvements would be paid for with a combination of federal grants and bonds.
The expansion was welcome news at The Lug. The brew pub is right off the Monon, just shy of 86th Street. With its beer garden and outdoor seating upstairs, brewmaster Scott Ellis said the Monon helps drive business, especially come summertime.
"I think it will be great, anything (that creates) more traffic and is safer for people on it, we're all for it," he said.
Several Monon users were among the Friday lunch crowd.
"I think it's awesome. There's such a variety of people biking, walking, running, skate-boarding, walking their dogs, that there's not enough room for everyone. It can be kind of frightening when you're running and you have a skateboarder or biker come by you fast," Logan Rassel said.
Jason Engle, who has toddlers agreed.
"It's hard walking down (the trail) with a stroller and have bikes going around you, so the (extra width) would definitely be nice," he said.
But Thom Burleson, who was running the Monon Friday said, "I don't think it will change anything, I really don't, because I run half the time on (the dirt path along the trail) anyway," which he said was better for his knees and legs.
He and his fellow runner hoped there would still be such a path when the trail was widened.
Spalding said that was something Indy Parks was considering. She also said the expansion would not require any private property, that it would all occur within the Greenway's right-of-way.
And she noted that the Monon would not be widened on bridges, at intersections or where it now bumps up to buildings or businesses.
