Leaders from across Kosciusko County provided a strong case of support Thursday for construction of a new limited access highway that would replace the existing U.S. 30.

And in return, some of the 100 or so people who attended Thursday night’s public meeting offered a variety of concerns over the idea of constructing a $1 billion freeway from Fort Wayne to Valparaiso.

Representatives of the county’s U.S. 30 stakeholders committee hosted a two-hour meeting at the Warsaw Performing Arts Center and outlined the severity of existing safety concerns and projections that call for increasing traffic.

Statistics provided by Michiana Area Council of Governments (MACOG) and the U.S. 30 coalition representing the seven counties underscored an immediacy to the concerns.

The highway currently carries about 30,000 vehicles a day, and if nothing is done, the Indiana Department of Transportation projects that number would rise to 38,000 by 2035.

The number of crashes on U.S 30 in Kosciusko County have risen significantly from 2014 to 2016. Total crashes surged from 237 in 2014 to 312 in 2016. Those include 11 fatalities.

Crashes at five key intersections in Warsaw represent 49 percent of all the crashes in the county.

Specifically, traffic between Parker and Center streets in Warsaw has risen from 23,186 vehicles in 2014 to 29,005 in 2017 – a 20 percent increase.

In recent years, congestion on U.S. 30 at peak traffic times requires several traffic signal sequences to move all of the backed-up traffic through the lights at some intersections in Warsaw, authorities said.



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The highway is also seeing truck traffic surging in recent years. According to MACOG, U.S. 30 carries a larger percentage of truck traffic in Kosciusko and Marshall counties than what is seen to the north on the Indiana Toll Road.

According to the coalition, a limited access highway would result in 323 fewer total accidents and four fewer fatalities per year.

“Overall, in every county that we’ve worked with, the consensus is, ‘yeah something has to be done,’” said Dennis Faulkenberg, one of two consultants working with the U.S. 30 coalition who was formerly the executive director of the U.S. 31 coalition and has a long history of involvement in many of Indiana’s biggest highway projects.

“It’s how it’s done is the difficult part,” he said.

Officials said they have not embraced any specific path and hope to have a meeting this fall to unveil preliminary options that could take the highway along its current footprint or either go around Warsaw to the north or south.

The proposal is not yet an official project taken in by the Indiana Department of Transportation, but concerns for the highway were first established by a blue ribbon panel during former Gov. Mike Pence’s administration and is now viewed as the next major new highway project in Indiana, Faulkenberg said.

Kosciusko’s portion of the project will be most challenging along the entire route, officials said. The reasons are numerous.

Compared to Allen, Whitley, Marshall, Starke, Laporte and Porter counties, Kosciusko County has the most stoplights (12) and intersections (17) and is third in the number of driveway cuts (34).

Aside from those numbers, there are environmental hurdles around the Warsaw area – including the existing lakes, soil conditions and commercial development – making Kosciusko County the likely “problem child” in determining a future path, Kosciusko County Commissioner Cary Groninger said.

A key consideration as the local stakeholders look at a preferred path will be development of a handful of interchanges spread across the county.

“You gotta have your address in your community. You don’t want to just bypass your community,” Faulkenberg said. “That will be a lot of what we have to work out here. This is about getting this road to work for you safely.”

Others on the stakeholders panel included Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer, Groninger, County Plan Commission Director Dan Richard, Warsaw City Planner Jeremy Skinner, Warsaw City Councilman Jack Wilhite and County Councilman Ernie Wiggins.

The entire list of stakeholders is upward of 25 people. Other representatives include people  from three other towns as well as Wayne Township, Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce, Kosciusko REMC, Kosciusko County Farm Bureau and OrthoWorx, among others.

One of the first  people to speak during a question-and-answer session brought up what he believed to be a lack of representation from the agriculture community on the local committee and pointed out that thousands of acres of farmland could be lost, depending on the freeway’s path.

The stakeholders group includes a member of the Kosciusko County Farm Bureau, and Thallemer noted that former county commissioner Ron Truex, who has strong farm ties, is also on the coalition.

Thallemer and Groninger offered reassurances that agriculture interests would be considered.

Jill Boggs, executive director for Kosciusko County Convention and Visitors Bureau, urged the coalition to consider the importance of a cluster of hotels that is growing near U.S. 30 and Center Street.

“As you look at Center Street and what you’re up against, I ask that you consider that,” Boggs said. “It’s a big, key economic impact.”

While many have a keen interest in the future path, others questioned the need for a new highway.

At least two people suggested a series of overpasses across U.S. 30 could be an alternative.

One woman questioned the expense and future maintenance costs associated with the overall plan.

It was also suggested that stepped-up law enforcement efforts could help reduce accidents.

“The county as well as the city –  they’re out there every opportunity they can, but it can’t be 24/7, unfortunately,” Thallemer said.

One audience member argued that some of the increased truck traffic comes from truckers seeking to avoid the toll road to the north.  The influx, he contended, came after the state “sold” the toll road to a private firm and raised tolls.

The toll road was actually leased by the state for a 75-year period.

A representative of MACOG said that while that argument has been heard, their research says the segment of truckers doing so is not significant. Much of the truck traffic comes from Ohio while another large chunk is relatively local, said MACOG Executive Director James Turnwald.

“There’s really not a good, easy answer to truck traffic. It’s growing exponentially everywhere,” Turnwald said.