Starke County Highway Superintendent Rik Ritzler and Office Manager Mary Perren have been working with WTH/GIS Representative Rhonda Milner to update the county’s road map.
In their work, they have reviewed 377 concerns, questions, and anomalies with the 2007 map. Ritzler told the Starke County Commissioners Monday night that the comparison of the 2007 map and INDOT’s 2019 road inventory resulted in 246 action items.
Ritzler said, “There are 91 changes we need to make with INDOT. We’ll be doing that next month with you guys. You’ll have to approve those. We’ll send those to you in advance so you can look at them all. We’ll actually be adding about 10 miles to our inventory which will add more money too which will be a good thing. We’ve needed to do this review for a while. We have 96 changes just on the map and then 17 INDOT and map changes.
The changes will be sent to WTH to make a new map layer.
In addition, Ritzler said the commissioners need to name three roads in the Hamlet area.
“One of them is the road going down the old Down and Under. It says old U.S. 30, but it isn’t. Old U.S. 30 goes underneath that. We need to name that. You can name it whatever you want. It’s 405 East by our system. The next two roads are at the Hamlet Industrial Park. It’s on 500 North just west of 750 East.”
The commissioners agreed to naming the roads by the conventional system used by the Starke County Highway Department with 405 East, 725 East and 735 East.
The information will be delivered to INDOT and the amended county road map should be ready by the end of the year.
