INDIANAPOLIS — Construction is officially underway at two streets near Downtown Indianapolis to convert one way roads to two way roads.
The city of Indianapolis says it's an effort to improve safety for drivers and pedestrians.
"It's for the greater good, it's for the development of our city. I think everyone is nervous about things when they're changing and then I think we're all going to be happy with it at the end of the day," Nicole Oesch said.
Oesch travels down Michigan daily and says she sees cars barrel down at high rates of speed.
"People just driving like crazy switching in and out of lanes," Oesch said.
Michigan and New York streets are currently being changed to two-way roads.
The city says studies show people drive slower on two ways than one ways.
The projects call for a complete overhaul of the streets and added pedestrian safety infrastructure.
But not everyone is excited about the change.
"I disagree with it, absolutely. I think traffic flows much better when you have 3 or 4 lanes," Bobby Jones said.
Jones lives in Indianapolis and says he doesn't understand the point of the conversions.
"Here's the deal I live over by Keystone and Emerson and at certain times in the evening it sounds like a drag strip and it's two ways. It doesn't matter folks are going to roll. If they want to police it, police it," Jones said.
Pedestrian activists welcome the road changes to the more than 10 streets in and around Indy.
"Anything we can do to make things a little bit safer for people walking and biking is a positive," Eric Holt said.
Holt is a pedestrian activist, who runs a non-profit called "Indy Pedestrian Crisis," that works to track incidents involving pedestrians in the city.
He says we are in a pedestrian crisis and work needs to be done to Indianapolis' infrastructure to make it safer.
He, like many pedestrian advocates say the change is needed but says there needs to be attention to details like bollards to protect pedestrians.
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"The fact that we are seeing these things but the professionals, the actual engineers aren't or aren't pushing for these extra enhancements is clearly a problem," Holt said.
Several of the conversions are being paid for with federal dollars.
The city expects the bulk of the projects to be done by the end of next year with additional rods completed by the end of 2027.
