World Bicycle Day is an official United Nations observance held annually on June 3rd. It recognizes the bicycle as a sustainable, affordable, and reliable means of transportation that promotes health, reduces environmental impact, and fosters social inclusion.
But first, your input is needed, again. It seems to be the season for trail user and bike habit surveys. They help guide future infrastructure development and give local governing bodies and decision makers a better sense of our needs and opportunities for improvement. Please fill them out. Today’s survey comes from bikewalknebraska.org and deals with how much cycle tourism, commuting, and events put into the local economy. Rails to Trails Conservancy has estimated how much finishing the Great American Rail Trail will benefit trail towns in Nebraska.
This is the route, notice the gaps still waiting to be finalized and funded.
The Nebraska Trails Foundation has a trail towns project which aims to help towns along bike trails better benefit from, and provide services to, cyclists. We don’t need to re-invent the wheel, many examples are available across the river in Iowa, where towns along the Wabash Trace provide examples.
Closer by, Eagle and Elmwood are good examples of rising bicycle tourism. The popular Lazy Horse Gravel Grind, recently decommissioned after 10 years, was an example of how an event could also be a celebration of small towns who embraced the riders every year. The event will be moving its location from Ohiowa, changing its name and taking up residence near Norfolk. There are many other events bringing extra income and excitement to small towns around Nebraska.
Being a Warm Showers host, and sometime user, I meet a steady stream of touring cyclists every summer. They’re usually, but not always, using the Cowboy Trail, Oak Creek Trail, and MoPac. Some pass through on the Homestead trail. Most are on coast to coast tours, some go South to North. Some take gravel roads. There’s no way to count them, other than seeing them. In contrast to what I’ve heard some rural residents near trails say, I do see cyclists enjoying the trails. On a recent Saturday at the end of the MoPac in Wabash, I stopped to eat my lunch and in the 10 minutes I was occupying the bench, I saw four cyclists from different directions ride by. Even without a connecting trail, some riders manage to cross the gap on gravel roads. Others I know will not, until the gap trail is built.
A 2.5 mile extension of the current trail along the rail bed was due to start June 1. The LPSNRD is asking trail users to stay off it until it’s complete. It will end at 346th st., a very nice minimum maintenance road (mmr) last I checked, but not the Platte River Bridge.
