The Journey Begins
On April 17th, I took advantage of the beautiful weather and headed down to the B-Line trail. Despite this being my third year living in Bloomington, I have yet visit the trail. I am quite the coffee connoisseur and have made several trips to the Dodd’s street location for Hopscotch Coffee, which is housed in a revitalized Depot building. There is a prominent intersection and entry to the B-Line right outside of Hopscotch. Since I was most familiar with this entry I decided to start my walk at the intersection of Morton and Dodds.
As I embarked I quickly came across a series of row houses that had clearly been recently renovated or even rebuilt. As I walked I thought about how if I were to stay in Bloomington after graduation I might like to live there until I started a family of my own. I don’t think I see myself living there forever though as the houses had extremely small yards and I would be concerned about the amount of traffic going by literally steps from the front door.
My family has a 12 year old black lab named Tilly. As she continues to age, it gets harder and harder to leave her whenever I go back to Bloomington after visiting home and thus I am always looking to fulfill my “doggy-fix” any time I can. Thankfully, there were plenty of dogs throughout the duration of the trail and it made me smile to see them out with their owners. One couple even stopped me as they stepped onto the trail to ask which direction the dog park was.
After passing over the pedestrian bridge that spans West Grimes lane, I began to see why the B-Line is such a popular destination for recreation and play. I came across the basketball courts by the police substation, where an energetic game was taking place. I then came across the pickle ball courts where I witnessed a couple, older than my 70 year old grandparents, playing pickleball. To be honest I was impressed and in awe of their physical agility! Then came the bocce ball court – which admittedly I don’t think I had ever seen anyone play until this day.
Around this time in the walk I ran into Sarah and Allison! We stopped to chat for a few minutes and compared our experiences on the trail so far.
I then came across the skate park where several people were dropping in on both bikes and skateboards. In the town where I grew up, there wasn’t a very large skateboarding culture, partially due to a lack of a place to skate, and because of this I think I’m also kind of mesmerized whenever I pass by a lot of people doing tricks and neat moves.
After the skate park, I approached Switchyard Park. This was my first time visiting the park and I was really impressed with it. It makes me kind of sad that I have lived in Bloomington for three years now and I am just now visiting. It’s a great location for all kinds of events. I appreciated how the planners thought of so many different uses; from outdoor kitchens, to concert space to even a large communal fireplace. I loved the jumbo porch swings and think I will consider coming back down to the park sometime to read or do homework on the swings.
I think my favorite thing about the entire walk though was getting to pass by the dog park. As I mentioned earlier, I love dogs and miss mine dearly. Although it wasn’t marked, it seemed as if there was a hierarchy between the two dog enclosures, one for the larger dogs and one for the smaller ones. When I circled back around to go back to my car, I was happy to see that the older couple that had stopped me earlier in the walk to find out which direction the dog park was had successfully made it and were smiling as their pup ran around the yard.
As I neared the end of the trail, I began to notice a large homeless encampment in the woods alongside the trail. I was honestly really surprised to see this on the trail. I think in the back of my mind I knew that area was one of the poorer ends of town, however, I guess I thought much of the unhoused community stayed in People’s Park or other areas. It felt pretty uncomfortable to know someone’s encampment was feet away from where I was taking a leisurely stroll.
When I finally came to the end of the trail, I was surprised at how abruptly it ended and just became a busy street. Cars were flying by – a stark contrast to the serenity and quiet activity of the trail. When I came to the trailhead, I circled back the way I came, stopping on some of the jumbo porch swings to rest for a bit at Switchyard and took some time to people-watch.
The People
I love to people-watch, and had a great opportunity to do so on this walk. From my observations, I would say the most common patrons of the trail wer
e elderly couples, young mothers with strollers, college students going for runs and the occasional teenagers on bikes who must’ve just gotten out of school. Aside from these patrons on thetrail, I noticed some interesting groupings of people off the trail. For example, a lot of the families I witnessed playing at the various playground off the trail tended to be non-white or had parents who were of mixed races. A large majority of the people playing basketball were African American and a lot of the people skateboarding were guys or male presenting.
The prompt for this blog post brings some really interesting thoughts to the surface about who is missing from the trail. I did feel like I was one of the only women my age on the trail, and although I would occasionally come across another young woman, they were usually joggers and looked like they came there often.
Connectivity
When thinking about connectivity I was actually surprised to see how easy the trail was to access for a large population. I specifically documented how a mobile home court bumped right up to the trail and offered a clear access point. As I noted earlier, there were numerous homes that had been refurbished right along the trail. Additionally, there were several points along the way in which I could see a parking lot right along the trail for easy access. Especially around Switchyard park there were multiple access points from parking locations.
If thinking about accessibility in the sense of people with disabilities, the trail – from what I can tell – ranks pretty well. As a smooth paved path with multiple entry points, people who use wheelchairs or other accessibility devices should have no problem getting on the trail. I even noticed a young boy in a walker with what looked to be his grandparents working their way down the trail. Additionally, it looked like a lot of the playgrounds offered varying levels of play structures that could accommodate any physical ability.
Land Use
I enjoyed getting to see such a wide range of land uses throughout the duration of the trail. It was really cool to see the old warehouses along the way that are now probably repurposed but may have once been vital to the railway industry. As I mentioned above, there were beautiful family homes, low income housing units and even homeless encampments along the way, providing a conflicting juxtaposition of residential and socioeconomic lifestyles. However, the entire area had a young and healthy vibe to it with some interesting “back-corners”.
Overall, I felt very safe and welcome on the trail and never felt as if I needed to watch my surroundings for someone who might hurt me.
Future Improvements
The B-Line is already great as it is, however, perhaps to employ some smart city solutions, it would be nice to see some markers along the way helping to identify the trees one may see on the side of the trail or maybe better explanations of some of the former infrastructure left behind from the area’s industrial days. These could come in the form of smart outdoor kiosks. With these kiosks, people could also report any injuries, look at where there are located on the trail or even check the weather to inform a decision to continue the walk. I could also see the installation of an automated equipment rental stand for people to borrow athletic supplies for the pickleball, bocce ball, basketball and and other courts. This would make playing these sports so much more accessible, regardless of financial ability to purchase the materials.
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