BY HANNAH GUNNELL
Beech Grove resident Ben Easley wants to see more trails and safe spaces for pedestrians in the southern part of Marion County.
So he founded a new community organization, the Southside United for Indianapolis Trails (SUIT), to help accomplish that task. The organization has been meeting once a month since October 2024.
“This was a group that I had kind of envisioned as filling a gap that I perceived south of Raymond Street as an area in need of trails, or a more unified block of residents advocating for safer infrastructure and active infrastructure for biking, walking and rolling,” he said. “I’ve been impressed by the terrific response we’ve had of both neighbors and political leaders across the spectrum. Trails are a broadly appealing idea for people and I think the southside is seeing the success that trailbuilding has had in other communities and other parts of Marion County and is excited about the opportunity to get more organized about bringing that kind of development.”
The group, which grows every month, gathers public input from residents about potentially dangerous areas during its meetings. Easley said they hope to provide this information to the Indianapolis Department of Public Works to help knock out any preliminary work the agency does to plan a project or apply for funding.
“I worked for the City of Indianapolis Department of Public Works between 2014 and 2022, so I was involved in their community engagement team and doing the work of collecting community input for a government organization, so I saw the groups that were advocating successfully,” he said. “When I moved south I thought, ‘Well, I know what it takes to start organizing people in a way that can be helpful for Indy DPW particularly,’ and I think that was a part of what I wanted the goals to be for this group, was let’s be helpful. Let’s not just go on social media and complain.”
Easley said in other communities, DPW has groups of people they can rely on to provide helpful information about what should be happening on the ground. The agency will often look for that community input anyway when applying for or providing grant funding, so he hopes SUIT will be able to assist the agency in both areas.
“We can do the prework for the agency in getting ourself organized, we can hand it over to Indy DPW and say we’ve done that work, this is what we want to see, and you can show your funding mechanism that this work has been done and done well,” he said.
The two big goals SUIT has already identified include encouraging southsiders to participate in the public engagement portions of Indy’s Vision Zero Plan and Greenways Strategic Implementation Plan, the latter of which saw public meetings last week.
“One of our first identified things to do as a group was to show up to those meetings and make sure the southside voice is heard,” Easley said. “Beyond that, we have wanted to be leaning into the other things that Indy DPW is offering, specifically the Community Powered Infrastructure Grants they have.”
One of these grants SUIT hopes to obtain would go toward focusing on reducing speeding on Troy Avenue near Emma Donnan Elementary and Middle School by installing a temporary tactical urban installation, for example.
SUIT meets at 6 p.m. on the second Tuesday of the month at Beech Grove City Hall. Easley thanked Beech Grove Mayor Jim Coffman for providing the space for the organization to meet regularly. The most recent meeting was Tuesday, May 13.
“If we want to move toward bringing major quality of life improvements to our side of town we need to be working together,” he said.
More information about the Southside United for Indianapolis Trails can be found on its website or its Facebook page.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the type of project that SUIT would use potential grant funding for. This has been updated.
