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The mechanism that the Kankakee Belt never went through has a legal name, a date, and — since 2018 — an Indiana checkbook. The legal half: through the 1970s, railroads shed branch lines freely under the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act of 1976, and corridors once broken up could never be reassembled. In 1983 Congress amended the National Trails System Act (16 U.S.C. § 1247(d)) to create interim trail use — railbanking: a corridor facing abandonment can instead be transferred whole to a trail sponsor, the railroad's interest preserved against reversion claims, the land held as a trail until and unless rail service is ever restored. The corridor is not abandoned; it is banked. Indiana's own policy record runs beside it: the transportation-corridor planning act (IC 8-4.5, 1987) and the recreational-use statute that shields landowners who let the public cross. The financial half, in layers: the federal Recreational Trails Program, funded from federal fuel taxes on off-highway recreation, paying for trail construction and maintenance through state DNRs since the 1990s; and Indiana's Next Level Trails, announced by Governor Holcomb in 2018 inside the $1 billion Next Level Connections program — $90 million at first, $150 million in all, the largest trails infusion in state history, administered by the DNR, requiring a minimum 20 percent local match, and by the state's own 2023 accounting good for nearly $120 million awarded to 73 projects before the $29.5 million Monon South railbanking acquisition. The Erie Trail's corridor to the south is this mechanism at work in the next county (railbanked 2003-era, Next Level money in December 2023); the Kankakee Belt through Walkerton was lifted a generation before the money existed, which is the dated reason its grade is a seam and not a trail. Closure: DUG — the Indiana mechanism is stated whole, legally and financially, with its dates.
Sources: Hoosier Rails to Trails Council, policy pages (1976 4-R Act; 1983 interim trail use/railbanking; IC 8-4.5, 1987); Indiana Law Review, rails-to-trails in Indiana (16 U.S.C. § 1247(d)); Indiana Governor's Office / DNR releases, 10 Jan 2023 and 20 Apr 2022 (Next Level Trails: $150M, 20% match, $120M to 73 projects); Indiana DNR, Next Level Trails FAQs.