Whenever cities build trails, developers follow the new housing, and businesses follow with new amenities.
Look at the BeltLine, 606 "Bloomingdale Trail", the High Line, and the Strand. These paths are immensely popular and great for transit, exercise, and social well-bring.
While old rails are not always available, virtually every city has a surplus of streets designed for cars, many with two parking lanes and two vehicles lanes, with the houses often served by alleys on both sides.
Cities could convert just a handful of 2 mile long neighborhood streets into trails. This would spur housing and business investment. It would improve health and safety.
The key challenge is convincing people who live on the street they can live there without vehicle access in front. The second challenge is handling all of the cross-street crossings. This can be done with street narrowing and visible crosswalks. Incremental upgrades can include pedestrian/cyclist activated signal synchronization for no-wait signal priority.
Please add Greater Cincinnati to your list. We're in the midst of an ambitious project to encircle the city (the Cincinnati CROWN) while building new and linking existing trails to that network. The progress over the past few years is impressive. Each new connection strengthens the network, like this latest piece that provides an important new link in the chain.
Bloomington-Normal has the Constitution Trail as a back-bone non-car travel. Goes straight through the university too.
https://www.constitutiontrail.org/
#buildthetrails!
Whenever cities build trails, developers follow the new housing, and businesses follow with new amenities.
Look at the BeltLine, 606 "Bloomingdale Trail", the High Line, and the Strand. These paths are immensely popular and great for transit, exercise, and social well-bring.
While old rails are not always available, virtually every city has a surplus of streets designed for cars, many with two parking lanes and two vehicles lanes, with the houses often served by alleys on both sides.
Cities could convert just a handful of 2 mile long neighborhood streets into trails. This would spur housing and business investment. It would improve health and safety.
The key challenge is convincing people who live on the street they can live there without vehicle access in front. The second challenge is handling all of the cross-street crossings. This can be done with street narrowing and visible crosswalks. Incremental upgrades can include pedestrian/cyclist activated signal synchronization for no-wait signal priority.
#buildthetrails #bettercitiesproject
Please add Greater Cincinnati to your list. We're in the midst of an ambitious project to encircle the city (the Cincinnati CROWN) while building new and linking existing trails to that network. The progress over the past few years is impressive. Each new connection strengthens the network, like this latest piece that provides an important new link in the chain.
It's been a really effective partnership between city and regional governments, parks and recreation and advocacy groups. https://moversmakers.org/2024/05/14/transformative-trail-to-link-downtown-to-lunken-airport-beyond/