Car-centric design dominated Calumet Avenue and Ridge Road, leaving pedestrians and cyclists feeling unsafe and disconnected. To remedy this, Teska Associates and the Town of Munster and City of Hammond, Indiana joined forces to create a more people-friendly future.
The Calumet Avenue Bridge project is the culmination of years of planning and collaboration. The journey began with the Munster Ridge Calumet Avenue Corridor Streetscape Plan, led by Teska. This plan aimed to reimagine Calumet Avenue and Ridge Road corridors, prioritizing people over cars. Through extensive community engagement, Teska gathered valuable insights to inform the design. The resulting plan offers a mix of long-term vision and practical solutions.
Project highlights include:
- Developed streetscape recommendations that balance long term visioning with practical maintenance needs
- Identified key corridor locations for flexible parking plazas, refuge islands, landscaped medians, ADA ramps, and high visibility crosswalks
- Provided appropriate plant lists that are native and tolerant of urban conditions
- Developed conceptual Gateway and Wayfinding signage
- Provided furnishing concepts that fit the character of Munster
- Synthesized public input from polls, project website, and public meetings
Blending Function with Vibrancy: A Multi-Modal Bridge Welcomes Visitors
During the streetscape planning project, a new multi-modal bridge was proposed over Calumet Avenue to create a safe link between Munster and Hammond.
Upon completion of the streetscape plan, the City of Hammond hired Teska to assist with the final design and construction phases of the bridge project, making it the first implementation project of the Calumet Avenue and Ridge Road corridor plan.
Construction of the Calumet Avenue Bridge was completed in November of 2024, creating a safe crossing for pedestrians and cyclists and demonstrating the power of collaboration between municipalities to achieve shared goals.
The newly-completed bridge is a standard steel truss painted ‘sky blue’ and matches another bike bridge crossing in town. For this multi-modal bridge, Teska was responsible for designing custom features including:
- Gateway sign
- Railing, fabricated from (3) different steel bar thicknesses, arranged in a ‘random’ pattern, to evoke native grasses found in the region
- Fabric banner, fabricated from dyed fabric mesh, zip-tied through grommets to individual sections in between the truss chords. The green/blue/yellow colors are an abstraction of the landscape.
Custom steel railing along the length of the bridge is designed to evoke native grasses.
Custom dyed fabric mesh banners and gateway signage creates a vibrant community gateway.
Colorful uplighting illuminates the bridge at night.