Monday, March 27, 2000
Bike trails have cities pedaling to tie in
BY CINDI ANDREWS
The Cincinnati Enquirer
LEBANON — At 10 feet wide and 62 miles long, it's the new shape of parks.
It's the Little Miami Scenic Trail, running from Milford north to Yellow Springs — sometimes within sight of the river, sometimes cutting through woods returning to life with greenery and yellow wildflowers.
Shawn Keegan of Milford walks along a busy strech of the Little Miami Bike Trail north of Loveland.
(Dick Swaim photo)
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The trail's popularity — 150,000 people bike, hike or skate along it each year — has other communities clamoring for more paved paths.
“Once you get a few of these built, people say, "I want one, too,'” said Jim Deming, director of the Ohio office of Rails-to-Trails Conservancy. “We used to have more passive recreation spots. Maybe it's a boomer thing, but people seem to want to go somewhere and be active.”
Warren County's Lebanon and Waynesville are hooking into the Little Miami trail, and downtown Cincinnati and Ma son are to connect to it eventually.
In northwestern Warren, Franklin is trying to raise money to connect to a trail that follows the Great Miami River about 20 miles from Dayton south to the Warren County
line. Other legs planned for the Great Miami trail will take in Butler County's Middletown and Hamilton.
A nationwide trend
Trail fever isn't exclusive to the Tristate; it's striking communities across Ohio and the country, encouraged by an interest in fitness and Congress' willingness to pass out money for them.
Ohio has 450 miles of trails that use the narrow strips of land left by former rail lines or canals, with an additional 1,600 miles in the works, according to Rails-to-Trails, which helps communities plan and develop trails.
Kentucky lags because it doesn't have many abandoned tracks, said Ann Gordon, a senior planner at the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI) in Cincinnati.
Nationally, almost 11,000 miles of rail trails have been built, and an additional 18,650 miles are planned. Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan lead with more than 1,000 miles of completed trails each, largely because they have the most abandoned railroad tracks, Ms. Gordon said.
Tristaters who have easy access to trails count themselves lucky.
“This is my exercise,” Laura Caldwell of Milford said recently after cycling 9 miles to Loveland. “The other thing I like is you see families.”
Recreation trails are like the front porch of the 21st century, said Ms. Gordon, because they bring people face-to-face in an age filled with computers and cell phones and fax machines.
“It's just good family fun, and you meet an awful lot of nice people on the trails,” said Chas Maloney, a Franklin cyclist who has been trying to bring one through his community for about 25 years.
His patience is about to be rewarded.
In perhaps six years, Mr. Maloney will be able to hop on the Great Miami trail in Franklin and bike north to Dayton.
If additional funding is secured, he'll be able to cycle south to Hamilton along the Great Miami River and the former Miami-Erie Canal.
In Hamilton, the trail will meet up with an existing, 3.4-mile trail.
Washington is paying for a little more than $1.1 million of the $1.9 million, 4-mile Franklin leg. The city is asking neighboring communities and the county to share the rest. Miami Conservancy District is helping coordinate funding and planning along the route.
Much of the money to build trails has come from federal transportation bills passed in 1991 and 1998, although local officials concede bicycling is not big with southwest Ohio commuters.
“Maybe we're not ready for that yet here, but maybe in the future,” said Hans Landefeld of the Dayton-based Miami Conservancy District. Some commuters use the bike trail in Dayton, he said, “but I wouldn't say there's a rush hour in the morning.”
Commuting impractical
Bob Craig, Warren County's director of planning, lives along the Little Miami trail in Kings Mills and could bike to work in Lebanon once the city connector is built.
“Will I do that? Probably not,” Mr. Craig said.
For one thing, he said, the county building, like most area workplaces, doesn't have the bike racks, locker rooms and showers that would make two-wheeled commuting a practical option.
Also, Tristate trails now are concentrated in parks and rural areas rather than around jobs.
That could change. Riverfront development plans are incorporating the Little Miami trail, and it should attract more commuters when it reaches downtown Cincinnati, Ms. Gordon said.
Lebanon sees its connector — part of which shares roadway with Deerfield Road and Kingsview Drive — as a way for adults and kids to get downtown or south to the Ralph J. Stolle Countryside YMCA on Deerfield Road.
The YMCA initiated the 7-mile project and paid $250,000 for the engineering and design work.
Lebanon and Waynesville depend on tourists to keep their antique stores and many other downtown shops in business, and they say linking with the Little Miami trail can't hurt.
Helps some businesses
But city officials and businesses say they're not counting on a large economic benefit, even though OKI's report said those 150,000 visitors each year spend an average of $13.54 each.
In Loveland, the Little Miami trail spawned bicycle and in-line skate rental stores. Other businesses such as the Trailside Cafe, still under construction, hope to capitalize on the pass-through business.
“It's awful hard to buy furniture and haul it on a bicycle,” said Nellie Osborn of Loveland Antiques, just a few yards from the trail. “But they come and look, and a lot of times they come back.”
After the Great Miami trail is built, no other major trail corridors are anticipated in the Tristate, Ms. Gordon said. Rather, she expects a “spider web” effect to develop as new communities hook into the Little Miami and Great Miami trails.
There's talk of connections — perhaps via shared roadway rather than dedicated trail — between those two corridors. Also, the Little Miami trail is part of the Ohio to Erie Trail, which is to run from the Ohio River to Cleveland.
OKI is holding hearings in April as it updates its 1992 bike plan; those interested can visit OKI's Web site at www.oki.org or call 621-6300.
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