Here's a look at the 'Top 20 Priority Connections' for trails, bike lanes, sharrows, wide sidewalks

Please click here to get a sense of the city's proposed Comprehensive Trails Master Plan. http://www.shive-hattery.com/CRTrails/pdf/09_121609_CR_Top_20_Priority_Segments.pdf

The map, created by design firm Shive-Hattery Inc., was featured at the city's open house on trails Monday evening.

As for the Monday event:

The event prompted this story in The Gazette:

The city and area bicycling and trails groups have had lines drawn on maps for years showing where pieces of an emerging trail system in the metro area should go.

It is still emerging.

To help in that regard, the city now is developing a Comprehensive Trails Master Plan that beefs up the city's commitment to trails and should help the city and the metro area acquire more state and federal funds to build more of the trail system.

Last night, trails backers turned out at an open house in Ballroom II at the Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel to weigh in on what the proposed Master Plan should emphasize.

The plan incorporates the idea that trails can be a “legitimate focus” of the city's transportation network and not just a recreational amenity for walkers and bicyclists, explained Al Bohling, a planner with city consultant Shive Hattery Inc. of Cedar Rapids.

The Master Plan envisions a network of trails, designated bike lanes, shared car-bicycle lanes called “sharrows” and wider sidewalks that will one day put every resident in the city within half a mile or five minutes from an access point to the network.

Cedar Rapids is a “very auto-centric” community and this plan will help make bicycling “a valid form of transportation,” said Rob Johnson, president of the Linn Area Mountain Bike Association and a member of the committee working on the trails plan.

Johnson said communities competing for state and federal trails funds always are asked if they have a master plan that proves that a trail is not a dotted line on a map but actually fits into the transportation matrix of a city.

Bohling said one working idea is to call the entire network of trails in the city Cedar Trails and to erect signage so people know where it is and when they are on it.

The proposed master plan includes 20 top priority trail or connection segments, which include Second and Third avenues SE and SW, Bever Avenue SE, Collins Road NE and Edgewood Road.

Dean Barnum, a longtime member of the Linn County Trails Association, noted that most of the trail alignments in the new master plan have been the alignments long supported by differing groups of trails enthusiasts in the community. He said some of the plans need a focus beyond the boundaries of Cedar Rapids because some of the proposed trails, like the Dry Creek Trail, cross jurisdictions.

Rich Patterson, director of the Indian Creek Nature Center, stopped at last night's open house to ask what steps the city might take to move portions of the Sac and Fox Trail along Indian Creek to higher ground so it wouldn't be damaged so frequently by flooding.

“How many times can the city afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair it?” Patterson asked.