Rumor mill grinds to a halt on 231

Ah, you have to love the way the rumor mill operates around here.

No sooner did a set of traffic counters appear the other day on North Jackson Street (aka U.S. 231) than unfounded rumors began to swirl.

Three counters were placed between the courthouse square and the viaduct at the edge of Greencastle. One spanned U.S. 231, just north of the city parking lot that is adjacent to the Banner Graphic building. Another was just south of Helmer Appraisal, with a third spread across the road just beyond Muffler Connection, north of the railroad tracks.

Oh, how quickly 1+1+1 can be misconstrued to equal 6.

The first person to say anything about the traffic counters obviously had it all figured out. Not!

They, he said (while failing to identify his "they"), must be planning to fix the viaduct (aka the "mouse hole") at the north edge of Greencastle.

Nope. Probably not until INDOT is adopted by the U.S. Mint.

Rumormonger No. 2 somehow figured a road-widening project was in the works for North Jackson Street.

"Just like south of town on 231," he reasoned, meaning the Bloomington Street-Veterans Highway intersection that has been under construction since the day of the fair parade.

Not a snowball's chance. How are you going to add another lane between the square and the railroad tracks when half the businesses are already only a sidewalk's width away from the roadway?

And what good would a third lane really do when the road would have to narrow back to two lanes to go through the aforementioned viaduct?

Third on the list was an oldie but a goodie.

I hear they're collecting data for a downtown bypass, the old-timer says.

Undoubtedly that would be the bypass that would include traffic driving over the Big Walnut Reservoir dam, right?

One quick call to INDOT settled the score.

No viaduct, no road widening, no bypass.

Just periodic traffic counts for INDOT files.

Not as interesting as the rumors it created. The truth seldom is.