St. Claire County Transit is also in the trail building business - that makes two public transit agencies in Southwest Illinois (Madison County Transit is the other) that are turning homes into trailheads.
St. Louis ‘burbs might have lessons for Chicago ‘burbs.
The AMAZING Madison County Bikeways Map, a set on Flickr.
We’re calling it: no public agency champions the role trails play in Illinois’ quality of life more effectively than Madison County Transit. And their maps are SO CUTE.
Thank you, MCT for sending us one! Get your map & play with the interactive version at http://mcttrails.org.
Nice picture and story yesterday in St. Louis Today about a trail group once again doing dirty, blessed work.
Federal trail grants are necessary. In Illinois, they are also inefficient—they add up to 30% to a trail project’s cost—and frustrating, sometimes adding years to completion. The International Mountain Bicycling Association groups—like GORC in the St. Louis/Edwardsville area, CIMBA around Lake Shelbyville, and CAMBr—often take a more direct route.
To make every home a trail head, Illinois has to seed and cultivate diverse models for funding and building trail. Who else out there is grabbing shovels or raising funds and getting it done in Illinois?
How cool is THIS? The @CahokiaMounds Heritage Trail Plan and an accompanying brochure are available for download.
Man, from a trail/bikeway-miles-per-person standpoint, I think the southwest Illinois metro area might be richer in amenities than NE Illinois. Research shows that trail users, regardless of how/why they are using trails, largely travel less than 10 minutes to get there; that’s about a 2-mile bike ride, or a 1-mile easy jog. Get a trail within 2 miles of where people live, and you’ve just turned their driveways into trailheads.
Someone do that analysis for us: what percentage of southwest Illinois metro residents have access to trails/bikeways within 2 miles of their driveway? Compared to Chicagoland?
We’ll call it the Driveway Trailhead index. Shoot us the numbers!
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David Fisher, executive director of Great Rivers Greenway in St. Louis Today.
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Swansea and Belleville christen a new bike/pedestrian bridge over Illinois 59 on August 18, the descriptively named MetroBikeLink Bridge. Says Bill Grogan of St. Clair County Transit District, “Our intent with building MetroBikeLink is to create the backbone of the trail system in St. Clair County. And with the ability to hop on MetroLink with your bike, it links our trails to those on the Missouri side to the river.” It’s about the connections!
The models for building connected trail systems for better health, easier transportation, and higher quality of life are already here in Illinois.