Roadblock on Rail Trail gap
Disagreement between city, state pauses plan
The city’s smooth asphalt Rail Trail takes cyclists and pedestrians on a winding, sometimes secluded course from the Railyard all the way to Rabbit Road on the southern end of town — with the exception of a short stretch near the South Capitol Rail Runner station, where the trail disappears and forces riders onto the bumpy roadway.
A plan to patch the trail gap has run into rocky terrain.
The city has had eyes for a fix since 2013 and last year awarded contracts to connect the trail between Alta Vista Street and Pen Road. Earlier this year, however, city councilors moved to halve the planned Rail Trail extension, which would mean a potential savings of roughly $400,000.
The project has since become tangled in a disagreement between the city and the state Department of Transportation, which said it will not allow the city contractor access to the railroad right of way to construct the abbreviated trail segment, saying it would be unsafe.
“We are not willing to allow the project to be built in pieces when that segmentation would channel more bicyclists into the South Capitol Station area but not provide them a safe way past that area,” Bill Craven, the state rail bureau chief, wrote in a March email to the city.
The abbreviated extension would see the trail extended along only Pen Road and a midstreet median island installed across Cordova Road. The cost of the original trail extension, a full connection between Pen Road and Alta Vista Street, would have cost roughly $950,000 — funded by a 2012 general obligation bond issue. The alternate extension city councilors chose to pursue would run roughly $540,000.
“Nine hundred and fifty thousand for a two-block trail just makes no sense to me,” said Councilor Mike Harris.
But the state Department of Transportation has made clear it will insist on the original plan.
“Our preference is to build the entire thing,” Craven told the city Public Works Committee this week. “It’s the safest alternative for all modes of traffic in that area.”
The city has expended roughly $210,000 on project design. Councilor Roman “Tiger” Abeyta floated the idea of putting the remaining $700,000 of the original project toward other unfunded trail projects if an agreement cannot be reached about how to finalize the Pen Road segment.
A city engineer, Leroy Pacheco, suggested that could “technically, probably” be done but cautioned the trail connection is a worthy objective.
“It’s part of a larger picture of
who we are and how we present ourselves,” Pacheco said.
The full City Council will take up the question of how much of the trail extension to construct, if at all, later this month.