The opportunity came in the form of a newspaper article about a new grant opportunity being offered by our County Parks and Recreation department, I read the article and called on the person from Parks and Rec that was quoted in the article. It appeared that the county had not fully implemented this program yet and it was still in the development phase. This was in the winter of 2008, by May of 2009 the program was ready, grant applications were being accepted and the criteria for applying for them was in place. We submitted our application for Phase I of a multi phase project in December of 2009 and received the award for the project in March of 2010.
We set about acquiring right’s of way, easements and approval from the Department of Natural Resources for crossing over a wetland area in Phase I. In June of this year we were given the permit from the DNR to begin, we set about advertising for bids, opened sealed bids on July 13th and on the 22nd of July our board approved the contractor for work on Phase I. A contract is being prepared and at long last work will begin on the project! The time frame for Phase I is four weeks and that phase should be up and running before school opens. A small group is being formed to ride it the day it opens. With the July 22nd meeting falling in the time frame of the contest dates and that meeting carrying the approval for work to begin I submit this for “support for bicycling infrastructure catagory”. I am in a unique position to be able to influence and authorize projects like this and am happy to be an advocate for non motorized transportation infastructure.
An overal map of the project can be found here and the narrative, scope of the project and outline of the pathway can be found here. In the outline of the project there are links to the exisiting Border to Border Trail in Washtenaw County and what future plans are to have a county wide network of pathways. To view the meeting agenda and packet information for the July 22nd meeting where the Board approved the contractor click here.
How exciting! That must be truly satisfying. I hope it won't be too long before you are posting photos of your rides on the new path :)
ReplyDeleteIt is exciting. Funny thing is that when I first launched this initiative I was not a bike rider but research for the grant, finding ways to connect to other trails in neighboring communities and working with the Parks and Recreation group exposed me to the network of paths in our county and I realized that our township lagged far behind others who had alread created biking infastructure. Our community has embraced this initiative and it has revived a love of the allure of biking in me. Funny how life goes sometimes. I had been searching for an outlet for getting healthier and managing my arthritis and here something in my work life ended up dramatically impacting my personal life.
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