Trails for Illinois - Every home a trailhead!

Walkability expert gets hearts pumping over need for pedestrian friendly transit »

I spent three days this week as active living expert Mark Fenton’s assistant, doing presentations and walkabouts in three different Chicago Southland suburbs. I want to leave you with this one of many, many profound takeaways from Mark’s work:

There is no cholera epidemic in America as there is in Haiti because we made policy-level decisions to ensure clean water and effective sewage removal for every home in our communities.

The epidemic facing us—soon to supplant tobacco as our most serious health risk—is inactivity. And just as cholera, dysentery, typhoid, etc. cluster and spread without adequate water and sewer infrastructure, so are the diseases of inactivity—including heart disease and Type II diabetes in CHILDREN, for god’s sake—spreading in Illinois communities without connecting sidewalks and trails.

It’s well past the time to have a different conversation about trails for Illinois.

The bottom line is jobs and economic development. Many of the other things we strive for in the industry, however, are showcased in this project: safety, efficiency, and sustainability.

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Lincoln Highway pole marking

Illinois Road & Transportation Builders Association’s chairman, Woodie Griffin on the U.S. 30/Lincoln Highway reconstruction which includes a separated and paved multi-use trail. That’s as close to voicing support for non-motorized trails as I’ve ever seen from the highway lobby. It’s almost an articulation of a Triple Bottom Line.

And why not, as a road builder, support trails? The well-designed, connected and separated side path adds value to the highway corridor, plus someone gets paid to build it. Chairman Griffin, given his perspective, gets it right.