About 600 people live in Holland, a rural town just over 20 minutes south of Jasper. Still, the roughly six-block downtown — where residents can visit a new community center and stop in for tenderloin at the American Legion Post — has a traffic problem.
“You wouldn’t believe the amount of traffic we have — walking traffic,” said Melanie Barrett, town council president. “People walk their dogs. They walk the babies. I mean, this is a very walking town.”
Some streets don’t have sidewalks at all. And in other areas, the brick and concrete paths are so decrepit it’s impossible to push a stroller or use a wheelchair or walker. One street has utility poles in the middle of the sidewalk.
It means walkers are often sharing the street with semitrucks that drive through town to get to the dairy processing plant.
Holland isn’t alone. Most places in Indiana aren’t built for pedestrians. But finding the money to install and repair sidewalks, crosswalks and other infrastructure can be a particular challenge in municipalities with small tax bases.
“Many rural communities don’t have sidewalks. They often have highways running right through the middle of town as their main street,” said Bill Brown, assistant director for strategy and engagement at the Indiana Resilience Funding Hub.
“This sort of high-speed traffic is dangerous, obviously, but it also reduces the opportunities for just getting out and walking,” Brown said.
Rural towns pursue federal grants
The Indiana Resilience Funding Hub is an Indiana University initiative that helps rural communities with fewer than 50,000 residents compete for grants, like a federal grant Holland applied for a few years ago.
Holland received $146,960 from the Safe Streets and Roads for All program — and spent $36,740 in local matching funds — to pay for a feasibility study, according to Barrett.
The study, which focused on adding new sidewalks and upgrading decayed ones, was completed earlier this year.
More recently, the funding hub worked with Montgomery — a town about an hour north in Daviess County — to apply for the same grant program.
The first priority in Montgomery is putting in a sidewalk along a stretch of Highway 50, said Doug Meiring, a town council member.
“We’ve got people in semitrucks that are on this all the time, right? This is by far the most highly traveled vehicular road in town,” Meiring said. Because there’s no sidewalk, people are forced to walk in yards, “or if the traffic is clear, they’re on the highway.”
Montgomery needs streets that are not only safe for pedestrians and cars but also for horses and buggies, because the area has an Amish community, Meiring said.
The town won the federal planning grant in late 2025, and it expects to begin a safety action plan this year. It also won an AARP grant to help pay for sidewalks along Highway 50.
Decaying sidewalks push pedestrians into the streets
Back in Holland, Patience Rogge was walking her dog downtown with her 6- and 10-year-old daughters on a recent Thursday. The community is safe, Rogge said, but the roads can feel hazardous for children because drivers are so often distracted by their phones.
“Our kiddos like to walk,” she said. “And they have to be in the road. There’s no safe space for them to walk.”
Leaders of the town in Dubois County want to improve pedestrian safety. About a decade ago they added a new sidewalk to help connect the daycare to downtown. But installing or upgrading sidewalks and crosswalks is expensive.
It’s not just pouring concrete, said Barrett, the town council president. The town might need to install new fire hydrants, redo stormwater drains or buy land.
Holland has the opportunity to apply for another federal grant to help pay for construction. But even if it won that money, it would need to contribute to meet matching requirements.
Barrett said she doesn’t want to raise local taxes, and it’s hard to find that money because the town has a small tax base.
It would cost close to $80,000 in local money to do even a small portion of the streets downtown, she said. By comparison, Holland spends about $130,000 each year for all of its road work.
Town leaders chose not to apply for federal funding this year because they had to decide whether to pursue it within weeks of completing the study, Barrett said. She left open the possibility that Holland might apply for the grant at some point.
But the future is uncertain. The federal grant program expires this year. It’s up to Congress to decide whether to continue funding.
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FPI News reporter Dylan Peers McCoy covers pressing issues throughout the state and how local communities are tackling those challenges. Reach her at 508-259-4809 or dylan.mccoy@fpinews.org.
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