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Katy Trail Connection

On Wednesday an event that the Missouri Bicycle Federation, bicycling and trails groups, and thousands of individuals across Missouri have been working hard to achieve for many years came to fruition with an agreement to "complete the Katy Trail" by connecting it to the Kansas City metro area.

The Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the Attorney General's Office, and the electric utility AmerenUE announced a settlement regarding the Taum Sauk dam disaster Wednesday,

The settlement includes about $180 million in reparation payments from Ameren.

Included in the settlement is a "trail use agreement" and $18 million that will allow DNR to build the Katy Trail Connection to Kansas City and will pay a good part of the expense of building the trail connection.

"Our thanks go to Governor (Matt) Blunt, Attorney General Jay Nixon, and DNR Director Doyle Childers for working together to make sure the Katy Trail Connection was included in the Ameren agreement," said Dr. Brent Hugh, president of the Missouri Bicycle Federation. "Political differences made the negotiations rocky at times, but all sides were able to see the benefit of the Katy Trail connection for all Missourians and, in the end, all sides had to work together to make it happen.

"All involved can consider the Katy Trail Connection to be an important part of their legacy--a new 46-mile long state park that will be enjoyed by many millions of citizens for decades and centuries to come," he said.

Here's some details about the connection provided by the federation:

• The Katy Trail connection will be built on the Rock Island railroadcorridor between Windsor and Pleasant Hill. Pleasant Hill is on the edge ofthe Kansas City metropolitan area. (Union Pacific owns the Rock Island line from From Pleasant Hill on in to Kansas City, and plans are already underway to connect the trail through Lee's Summit and eventually to downtown Kansas City via alternate routes.)
• The portion of the Rock Island corridor that will be used for the trail isabout 46 miles. Putting this together with the 'Machens extension' on theeast end (about 11 miles), this will increase the total size of thecomplete Katy Rail-Trail network to approximately 282 miles.
• The Rock Island portion of the trail will be a "rails-with-trails" project--the trail will be built in the railroad right-of-way alongside the railroad tracks so that the railroad can still use the corridor in the future. Building the Katy Trail Connection alongside the existing track will be relatively expensive compared with building a trail on the railbed, as the rest of the Katy Trail and most rail-trails are. Much grading and foundation work must be done, and bridges and underpasses built alongside existing railroad bridges and underpasses.
• However, the agreement includes $18 million from Ameren to assist in construction expenses. Apparently this is not enough to completely construct the 46-mile segment and additional funds will be needed--either from the Missouri General Assembly or from other sources.
• The state also receives first right of refusal for purchase of the railroad corridor if Ameren ever decides to sell it.

Here's some more links about the Katy Trail Connection

• Complete text of the agreement with Ameren (PDF format): http://ago.mo.gov/pdf/2007/TaumSaukConsentJudgment.pdf
  
• Where will the Katy Trail Connection go? What will it look like? A map and visualization of the "shared corridor concept" be found at the federation's site.
  
• Gov. Matt Blunt's press release
• Attorney General Jay Nixon's press release
• Kansas City Star
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  
• Associated Press
  

Labels: Katy Trail, Missouri

Roger 0 comments links to this post 3:01 AM   

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Cycling issues in Missouri

There's good news and bad news regarding cycling on the Missouri side of the St. Louis Metropolitan Area.

First, the good news: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Wednesday that work on an additional 11 miles of the Katy Trail in St. Charles County should begin this summer. Gov. Matt Blunt announced Wednesday that the state and the local levee district have finally reached an agreement on completing the section of trail from St. Charles north to Machens.

Blunt said the state has asked Ameren Corp. to let the state use an old Rock Island Railroad bed it owns as part of the trail, the Post-Dispatch This would extend the trail from Windsor, east of Clinton, to Pleasant Hill, a suburb of Kansas City.

Now, the bad news: Fritz's Cycle-licious blog has picked up on the controversy raised by some cyclists about the plans to divert motorized traffic from Interstate 64/U.S. Highway 40 onto Clayton Road, a popular road with St. Louis County cyclists, during the reconstruction of I-64/U.S. 40.

I haven't written about the topic because I thought it was being handled well by the Missouri Bicycle Federation and the St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation forums. Since I don't have a lot of first-hand experience riding on St. Louis County roads -- the bulk of my local riding is done on Illinois roads and trails -- I'm not sure how qualified I am to offer an opinion.

The concerns is that the plan for Clayton Road to handle some of the I-64/U.S. 40 would eliminate the wide lanes popular with cyclists, and there are fears that the altered lanes would become permanent once the highway work is done.

Garry Earls, St. Louis County's chief highway engineer, told one member of STLBikeFed:

... St. Louis County has neither considered nor proposed that bicycle traffic be banned on public roads. We know that in a perfect world, the masses would embrace bicycle riding as their regular mode of transportation. It's good for the heart and good for the planet. We don't live in a perfect world. In the real world, our community is composed of a diverse population measured from any statistic. It is clear that commuter patterns and family composition establish a level of motor vehicle traffic on our roads that cannot be swept away by any transportation planner's idealism. The reality of our circumstances is that for an extremely high percentage of our road users, the 10-speed simply isn't an option for traveling to work or getting children to school.

And that is the crux of the issue: Is the greater good served by providing options that serve the populace as it now stands, or is it better served by options that change the way people approach transportation in the region?

Labels: advocacy, commuting, cycling, Katy Trail, St. Louis

Roger 1 comments links to this post 12:31 AM