I-69: a badly needed lifeline

As a community, Bloomington needs to grow and expand, but we have no means of doing so. Ergo, we need I-69.

This is a big college town, with students from anywhere and everywhere. Businesses grow here, people are successful here, and with all the commercial trade and the diversity of the population, we need a means to commute, a means for business to export and import.

And while we could argue environment and cost all day long, at the end of the day, we don’t have an efficient means of commerce and trade.

And because we don’t have efficiency, we limit the abilities of business and the abilities of our residents.

On top of that, the Monroe County residents who protest the building of the highway are, albeit vocal, few.

Many individuals in surrounding counties like Vanderburgh, Gibson, Pike, Daviess and Greene are strongly in favor of the build. 

Mike Sprinkle of the Daviess City Council is adamant the new highway is vital to the survival of southern Indiana.

He says he feels like southern Indiana is “the stinky toe” of the state.

The highway is seen as the missing link, the thing that will connect southern Indiana with the rest of the world, and I agree. I live an hour away, and it’s hard to get here.

It’s a labyrinth of back roads and truck freeways, with cop cars waiting around hidden bends and corners to leap on the unsuspecting driver.

It’s simply not an efficient way to build the Bloomington economy, especially Bloomington proper. There is a clear disparity of commerce between the Bloomington surrounding the secluded IU campus and the Bloomington that thrives around the commercial trade across the freeway.

And with instability in the economy, without the guarantee of commerce, Bloomington is more likely to lose residents. It has already begun.

We produce, as a University, some of the most qualified business professionals, doctors, nurses and artists this side of the Mississippi, most of whom leave for the bright lights of Chicago, Indianapolis, Seattle, Minneapolis, New York — anywhere other than the city that produced them.  And they leave because there’s nothing here.

Coupled with limited opportunity, many students feel uncomfortable leaving campus.

They don’t feel safe in the city of Bloomington, they don’t feel the cushion of a comfortable economy, so evident on campus, in Bloomington itself.

And they don’t want to stay in southern Indiana when they graduate.

But I-69 is at last a solid guarantee of commerce and trade, a guarantee that business will come here and then stay here.

Then, rather than losing our business and exports, and the people that go along with them, we can keep them and build a more successful town and a more stable economy.

We can turn the skills we teach the students here and funnel them into the city they live in.

If we want a safe environment for students, if we want an economy that guarantees jobs and prosperity for both graduating students and local residents, if we want stability and success, we need I-69.

­— ewenning@indiana.edu