C
incinnati is no Portland or Minneapolis when it comes to being a biker’s paradise. Relative to its peer cities, Cincinnati is lacking in on-street bike lanes, and its trail system — while ambitious — is still relatively disconnected. Bike activists across the city are trying to change this, and lately they’ve started thinking big.
On Dec. 16, supporters of the city’s four biggest bike lane projects unleashed a plan the size of a small phone book for a proposed 42-mile super trail passing through 32 of the city’s neighborhoods.
Supporters hope the big vision and effort will be catalytic in attracting local, state, federal and private funding that has yet to come to the loop’s smaller component trails. But there are still questions about how much the huge project will cost and when it would be finished.
The plan, called Cincinnati Connects, is spearheaded by the nonprofit Groundwork Cincinnati, whose primary focus is the Mill Creek Greenway Trail. It’s also getting support from bike activists who head three other major bike trails that, when finished and linked, will make up the so-called “cycling super highway” the organization envisions. Those groups are the Ohio River Trail West, the Oasis trail and the Wasson Way trail.
Groundwork Cincinnati and Mill Creek Executive Director Robin Corathers says the group started on the project 15 months ago after Interact for Health, a nonprofit arm of Humana Healthcare Services that awards grants to regional health programs, approached them about creating the beginnings of a regional bike trail plan.
“One thing we found is all these trails are great, but they’re fragmented,” Corathers says. “They’re isolated. There’s no connection.”
With help from the $186,000 grant from Interact for Health, Groundwork Cincinnati hired a steering committee comprised of bike activists and technical consultants to figure out how to combine the four major trail projects into the citywide trail for everyone Cincinnati Connects envisions.
“The idea is that anyone regardless of their ability or their race or their income or where they live could be able to get on this trail and travel through the city without a vehicle and do it in a safe way,” Corathers says.
The plan has already gotten approval from Mayor John Cranley, Vice Mayor David Mann and Hamilton County Commissioner Todd Portune, who pledged to help apply for local grants to help the effort during the group’s launch party on Dec. 16 at the downtown Coffee Emporium.
The proposed trail links the four major proposed bike routes with the help of six connector trails totaling 8.6 miles, making a comprehensive loop around the city. The trails would also have the added benefit of connecting to regional trails leading to Dayton and Columbus.
According to Corathers, the additional connecting trails could strengthen the group’s ability to compete for public and private grants.
“Having a 42-mile urban loop trail is far more competitive, particularly for the federal grants, than applying for just a single trail, like one phase of a trail,” Corathers says.
In the case of the Wasson Way project, a 7.6-mile trail proposed to run from Avondale to Mariemont, Cincinnati has twice been passed over for federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants.
The city received about $11 million in TIGER grants in 2010 for the streetcar and hasn’t received any since. Los Angeles, in comparison, has received $73 million in TIGER grant funds since 2010, with much of the money going to fund bike or rail projects.
A University of Cincinnati Economics Center study commissioned by the Cincinnati Connects project estimated the net economic benefit from the trails will be $43.5 million and that 242,000 Cincinnatians would live within one mile of a trail. The study focused solely on the connecting trails and used methodology defined by the federal government to determine the trail’s impact.
With the tab for just the connector trails estimated to cost nearly $21 million, according to the UC study, the full project is bound to be costly on top of the challenges and setbacks the four individual trail projects have each faced on their own.
Cincinnati City Councilwoman Amy Murray, who chairs the Major Transportation and Regional Cooperation Committee, says bike routes are a priority in the next year. But she says while she’s excited to see the proposal on paper, the city’s priority is on building the first four major bike routes before working on the connecting trails.
“We have to get those built before we start, as far as the city, looking at the connectors,” Murray says. “But it’s nice to see on paper how this could all flow together, because you have to have the vision before you can start doing the work.”
Murray says the city is focused on Oasis and Wasson Way trails right now because they’re going to take a while.
Estimates place the cost of the Wasson Way project at between $7.5 and $11.2 million to construct. The city still needs to acquire some of the land for the proposed route from the current owners, the Norfolk-Southern Railroad Company.
Finding ways to fund the project has at times been a challenge. Aside from missing out on the TIGER grants, chances of potential funding from Issue 22, Mayor Cranley’s parks tax levy, died when voters shot down that ballot initiative in November. The Wasson Way project did recently secure a $500,000 grant from the state of Ohio’s Clean Ohio Trails Fund, however, and boosters hope the widened impact of the Cincinnati Connects plan will make the project more competitive in grant
application processes.
Other trails will need to scratch up more cash as well. The Oasis Trail, a 4.5-mile trail next to a freight line that would run near the Ohio River on the city’s East Side , still needs to raise an estimated $4-$5 million. That project has had much support from city and state officials and was approved by city council last March. But it has faced opposition from rail company Genesee & Wyoming, which operates a rail line next to the proposed trail.
While the idea of a long bike path with supposed strong economic benefits seems like a winning plan, current maps of the project show that the connected paths would circle the city, rather than lead straight into the downtown area. The West End, Over-the-Rhine, Pendleton and Mount Auburn are some of the more heavily populated, centrally located neighborhoods currently not on the loop’s path.
Corathers says the proposed plan is just a skeleton of the network that bike activists envision one day in the city. She says she would also like to see studies on trails west of Mill Creek and smaller trails heading toward the central downtown area.
Many questions remain about the cycling super highway — a final price tag on what Cincinnati Connects is going to cost, a definitive timeline for completion, how individual issues presented in each of the major trail projects will be solved and how to attract more funding. But Corathers says the unveiling of the project is just the beginning, noting that Cincinnati Connects’ steering committee will meet in January to establish a timeline and to start planning how to tackle funding sources.
“It’s going to be a puzzle, and we’re going to have to find the pieces and put them together,” Corathers says. “I think it’s going to be a masterpiece when we’re done.” ©
This article appears in Dec 30, 2015 – Jan 5, 2016.