| November
2006 |
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Trails 'Cast Spell' over 'Burbs Suburbs Seek Help with Bicycle Facilities New Policy Steers Chicago Streets Toward Completion 'Rack 'Em!' Bike Parking Expands, Evolves in Chicago Bikes Kept a Rollin' All Year Long on Metra Donors are the Force Behind Good Biking |
Trails ‘Cast Spell’ over Burbs
I was not a trails guy. I am a road-using cyclist. But recently, boy, I love a good trail. Like pastors love to sleep in on Sundays. Whuhappen? Simple: It was sorcery. Oh, it is magic, I tell you, manifest in the light in people’s eyes when they see a line connecting points across a plain once inaccessible and impossible to traverse. I’ve yet to find an on-street or pedestrian project that can give Southland folks those spinning Loony Tunes eyes. My job is to get people excited about bicycling, and to ignore trails’ power is like Gandalf using his staff as a three-iron. “Hits a few key markers” is the qualifying term for
a magical trail, to whit: The trail idea with these qualities plays a piper’s tune. Ironically, it also shares these qualities with the highest purposes that can be ascribed to a road: expanded human interaction; more outside attention to a region and its issues and attributes; economic development; a sense of ownership and identity instilled in a region; and experiencing something bigger than oneself. The Calumet-Sag Trail, a proposal to link Burnham and Lemont with a multi-use trail along the Calumet-Sag Channel, hits these points like a 15-pound sledge. In September 2004 at a meeting in Palos Heights, I unknowingly waved an enormous wand above a crowd of residents, public officials and myself when I suggested that a multi-use trail linking communities along the Cal-Sag should become a focus of southwest suburban communities’ bike planning efforts. With lessons drawn from the Plank Road Trail, I thought then that such a trail could become the vine that would sprout on-street bike networks in the communities it touches. I more firmly believe that today. But since that meeting, the spell of the Calumet-Sag Trail has boosted and/or changed the direction of nearly every initiative planned or operating along this neglected, underutilized corridor. It has given a seat at the table to noble efforts and people who have worked hard for years to be allowed to participate in the future of the Burnham-Lemont corridor. I believe it has the potential to both cause and define the redevelopment of more than one town. And it has received funding: The Illinois Transportation Enhancements program awarded $340,000 to Palos Heights to begin preliminary engineering work. Three foundations awareded CBF grants for the trail’s development too: the Field Foundation ($10,000), Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelly Foundation ($18,000) and Grand Victoria Foundation ($15,000). There are other Southland trails further along than the Calumet-Sag Trail (or already built)–the Plank Road Trail, the Illinois & Michigan, the Burnham/Pennsy Greenway, the I-355 extension’s multi-use trail–that developed with a lot less fanfare, and with much less lofty expectations. They all hold the same promise. And as the Southland warms to competing on a quality of life basis with the Northeast Illinois region, it will begin to see all its magical trails as the scenic byways of our region, and start to capture the opportunity they present. The Southland’s best roads are its biggest trails. Maybe I don’t have to admit to being a trails guy after all. Steve Buchtel is Southland coordinator for the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation
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