Seventy percent or more of trips in a car are three miles or less.

That's a pretty easy trip to do on a bike.

[energetic theme music] [Sound of bike carrier] Narrator: Dustin New has some creative ideas for the future of transportation.

He's an active transportation planner for the Michiana region’s planning council, known as MACOG.

Dustin New: Basically my focus is things that are not motorized and how people use those to get around.

So bikes, scooters, walking.

[typing] Narrator: He's occasionally just called the “trails guy.” New: here we go.

Narrator: His job on many days is to crunch mapping data for over 160 miles of trails in four counties.

But on other days?

New: On the nice sunny days like this to get out on the trail and record some data.

Narrator: And he records that data just by riding this bike.

New: So this is our data bike.

[Upbeat music] Narrator: New says the bike is the first of its kind in Indiana.

New: The key piece is the phone.

It's just a standard smartphone.

So as you’re riding along the trail, you hit bumps, [tire rolls over bumps] The phone vibrates, it records that as an anomaly in the road, or in the trail.

And we get that data on the condition of the trail.

Up top has a 360-degree camera.

So we'll get kind of a street view, we're calling it the trail view.

And then it also has a camera on the back that shoots downward.

The idea is that we can then develop a GIS map where you can see the condition of the trails graphically.

So you could literally look at a photograph of what created that rough condition.

Could be poor pavement, it could be pavement change, whatever it may be.

But you can then evaluate it and decide if it needs to be fixed immediately, longer term planning for fixing it, and then develop a budget for it.

Narrator: That last part about budgeting for trail maintenance, that's the culture shift that New hopes to encourage within the region his planning council serves.

New: Each of the communities within that area or, and/or counties, has responsibilities for maintaining their trails.

There may be, but I'm not aware of any community that has a budget item or a line item for trail maintenance.

And that's the problem.

It's always something has to be given up somewhere else in a budget to make that happen.

Narrator: Lack of funding for routine trail upkeep is not a local problem.

[Music under] A decade ago, the Ohio River Greenway authored this manual for trail maintenance, calling deferred trail maintenance a nationwide issue.

Part of that issue lies in how trails are typically funded.

Since 2019, Indiana's Next Level Trails program has invested 180 million to develop more than 217 miles of trails in 58 counties.

It's the largest infusion of state funding for trails in Indiana's history.

The program has funded 89 trail projects so far, favoring projects that make connections between other trails or communities.

And while the ultimate vision for the future is a system of interconnected trails across the entire state... New: where the actual trails go, though, is generally going to be a local decision and pushed by the local community.

Narrator: Building one mile of new trail can cost a local community between $800,00 and $1.2 million, depending on how it's constructed.

Maintaining that mile of trail once it's built is generally cheaper.

Estimates range from $1,000 to $10,000 per mile per year.

However -- and here's the issue -- the grants that help local communities build trails generally won't pay to maintain trails, but they do require local communities to have a maintenance plan.

[Sound of bike riding] That's why MACOG is getting creative, providing local governments the data they need to prioritize trails like roads.

[Sound of bike riding] New: MACOG looks at trails as an asset to the community.

And part of what is typically done with roadways, for instance, is communities have an asset management plan to kind of quantify the condition of their roadways.

We have the thought that that could be applied to trails as well, but we needed a way to do that.

Narrator: MACOG already has data on trail usage.

Sensors like this one capture how many people go by and when, and even distinguish who's walking and who's on a bike -- making it easy to see that many trail users are actually commuters.

New: There are upticks in the time of day that we have the most traffic.

It's mornings and afternoons when people are going to work and people are coming home from work.

You know, it's not all recreational.

That's, you know, kind of the approach that we're starting to take, is that if you plan trails for people to commute on, you know, you get both benefits without having to just focus on one.

Narrator: If it works, the data-driven approach could unlock new sources of funding.

New: Just like the asset management plans can be used to develop budgets from highway dollars, whether it be federal or state, we think you should be able to utilize those same pools of money to maintain your trails in your community.

So that's kind of the goal is to try and get people to see the opportunity.

And then you've also got to create the opportunity.

Trails are the opportunity to give people to use something other than their car.

[Closing theme music]