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Plan to pave Columbia trails re-configured
Thursday, November 16, 2006
A plan proposed by new Columbia bicycle/pedestrian coordinator Ted Curtis, to pave Columbia's existing trails to make them more useful for transportation, has become controversial.
PedNet trails planners have decided to take a different approach:
Faced with a public reaction hot enough to peal the concrete off a walking path, city officials have backed off a controversial proposal to pave Columbia trails, including the MKT.
Instead, PedNet Project planners will look into paving a portion of another Columbia trail.
Ted Curtis, a senior planner in charge of the $22 million federally-funded project designed to coax people out of their cars and onto bikes and walkways, said comments by trail users upset with the proposal led him to recommend the MKT be left alone.
"It's too much of a lightning rod right now," Curtis said. "I'm a little concerned people are going to focus on that issue and not look at the big picture" of encouraging non-motorized transportation.
The decision doesn’t eliminate the possibility that some portion of Columbia’s existing nature trail network could be paved. In fact, in a separate proposal, the committee recommended a demonstration project on one of the city’s other trails to show how parallel trails, one paved and one gravel, would work. The particular trail used for the demonstration will be decided by the committee after further analysis.
After public outcry in response to the original proposal, Mayor Darwin Hindman said a compromise could be reached in which the city would pave only the portion of the MKT Trail from Stadium Boulevard into the city. The committee’s recommendation to not pave any section of the trail seems to go a step further. . .
The committee also recommended that some hard surface be the default surfacing for all future trails constructed or expanded by the Pednet Project.
Lindner said the committee’s recommendation to pave new trails constructed under the program would comply with guidelines set forth by the federal grant. The grant was designed to finance improvements to non-motorized transportation in the city and specified that all new trails should serve as commuter trails rather than nature trails.
