City plans two new bike-trail segments next year

No new bike-trail segments will be constructed in Mitchell this summer, but design work is progressing on new segments scheduled to be built next summer.

The city has $500,000 in federal grant money, plus a $300,000 local match, to spend on bike paths in 2010.

“I don’t think the grant will cover all we want to do,” Tim McGannon, the city’s director of public works, said recently. “But we’ll see what we can get done for that amount.”

The first new segment to be built next summer will connect an existing trail that terminates at Lakeview Municipal Golf Course with another existing trail that terminates near at junction of Ohlman Street and Indian Village Road. From the golf course, the new segment will stretch west to Ohlman and then north up Ohlman to connect with the trail at the Ohlman/Indian Village intersection. The total length of the new segment will be about one-third of a mile.

The other next new segment scheduled to be built next summer would start at Lake Mitchell’s West End Bridge and stretch around the northwest end of the lake to the city’s new soccer complex — a total distance of about two miles. A historic bridge has been rescued from a rural Davison County road for possible installation as a bike-and-pedestrian-only bridge over the canal that encircles The Island residential development.

McGannon is not sure how much of that two-mile segment can be completed with the funding that is available.

“We need to get some difficult construction work done around the West End and the other bridge up there where we have a guardrail and some other things to work on,” McGannon said. “That’ll be the difficult part. If we get that done, it will be a good first step.”

The city has a separate grant for 80 percent of up to $150,000 of the cost to utilize the historic bridge. Bids to install the bridge came in far higher than expected, so McGannon hopes to rebid the project later this year. In the meantime, the bridge is at a city storage facility.

After next year, a future bike-trail segment that city leaders hope to build would stretch through a rural area from near the 23rd Avenue and Ohlman Street intersection to the West End Bridge. That proposed segment, measuring about 2.6 miles, would provide a connector route from the city-proper to the new soccer fields on the city’s northern edge, assuming next summer’s planned segment reaching to the soccer fields is completed.

The city has applied for federal stimulus funding for the rural segment but did not receive any funding during the first round of awards.

“It’s possible there’ll be another round of stimulus, but I don’t know that,” McGannon said.

The city’s bike-trail plans are the product of a bike-trail committee created in 2006. The committee has met numerous times to prioritize proposed new segments and brainstorm ways to promote usage of the city’s existing trails. Recently, the committee and the city published a “Bike Trails, Recreation, & Lake Map” that is available at some city offices and on the city Web site, www.cityofmitchell.org.

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