Miami Valley RailTrails Newsletter March 2009

Miami Valley RailTrails Newsletter
March 2009

It’s Sunday 15 March 2009; Happy Ides of March. I got our bikes tuned up and bought a hitch and new bike rack for my wife’s car so we are ready to start enjoying our trails soon. You may see me taking photos and notes of one of your favorite trails so that I can update it on my website. I have a LOT of news for you. Please read on.

Trail Construction and Improvements.	Website Changes and Improvements
Photos & Information Wanted Section	Did You Know Department
Announcements of Upcoming Cycling Events	Webpage of the Month

Trail Construction and Improvements

Federal Stimulus Bill will pay for trails construction – I wrote all of my email newsletter readers March 7th. to advise them that MVRPC had eight bike projects on their list of projects that might be funded with Stimulus Funding. On 19 March 2009 the MVRPC staff made their recommendations to the MVRPC Board. There were 95 projects totaling $83M for the available $27M. There were eight proposed bike trail projects recommended to MVRPC. The staff has recommended that the following three projects be funded:
- Iron Horse Trail Phase 2 – The $70K in federal funds will pay to extend the existing trail .4 miles South from Iron Horse Park to I-675
- Creekside Trail Resurfacing Project – The $220K will be used to pave the trail in Beavercreek.
- Xenia Station Pedestrian Crossing Improvement – The $51K will allow the City of Xenia to improve the bicycle crossing of South Detroit Street from Xenia Station to the Ohio to Erie Trail.
Mad River Recreation Trail Extension Plans – I attended recently a meeting in Riverside between their engineers, planners and lawyers with Five Rivers MetroParks about the planned extension of the Mad River Recreation Trail. The plan has been to build a trail East thought Eastwood MetroPark, under the Mad River Bridge on Harshman Road, through a bit of the Dayton Well Field on the East side of Harshman, under the CSX tracks through a tunnel, run by the City of Riverside’s Center of Flight and then run East alongside the North side of Springfield Street past the National Museum of the Air Force and the main gate of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base “Area B” to Huffman MetroPark. The meeting was to finalize the planned route. According to what I was told, the contract will go out Spring 2010 with a hoped for start of construction of 1 July 2010. With a bit of luck, you’ll be able to ride this new 2 mile trail by Fall 2010. This trail section is important because it will connect Fairborn’s Wright Brother’s Bikeway that runs along Kaufman Avenue to Eastwood MetroPark and then to the rest of the trails system.
Whitewater Park in Springfield may draw tourists – The City of Springfield is starting construction on white-water rapids in the Buck Creek and in order to make it more useful, “future additions will likely include parking, restrooms and extension of bike paths said Mr. John Loftis, the project’s originator. To read the entire article Click Here or above Source: Dayton Daily News.
Tipp City rides away with low bid for bike path – Tipp City awarded a contract to continue the Great Miami River Recreation Trail (Miami County) in their Kyle Park. This trail segment will connect eventually with Taylorsville MetroPark in Montgomery County thus connecting Montgomery and Miami counties portions of the GMRRT. To read the article Click Here or above.Source: Dayton Daily News.
City of Springboro OK’s Bike Plan – As a part of our regional efforts to make the Miami Valley a “Bike Friendly Community” [an award given out twice a year by the League of American Bicyclist] several towns and cities in the area have established bicycle committees to plan trails in their community. The City of Springboro recently approved their bicycle planning committees plan to improve their walking and bicycling infrastructure. To read the article Click Here or above. Source: Dayton Daily News.
Bike Path Right of Way approved – Recently the City of Kettering approved a resolution to continue the Iron Horse Trail which ends at the Kettering’s Southern boarded on Hempstead Station Road. Last year the Centerville-Washington Park District built a 1.54 mile segment of this trail from Iron Horse Park to Hempstead Station Road. The City of Kettering is planning to purchase land from Cassano’s at the corner of Hempstead Station Road and E. Stroop Road. The City of Kettering has an opportunity to continue to run the trail North from Hempstead Road to eventually connect with the trail’s Northern terminus at State Farm Park. When completed the trail would connect Centerville, Kettering and Beavercreek to the West end of the Creekside Recreation Trail. Also Kettering, Oakwood and the City of Dayton can connect to the University of Dayton on the existing railbed that runs Northwest from the North side of E. Stroop Road. across the street from Cassano’s. To read the article Click Here or above. Source: Dayton Daily News.
Tecumseh Trail Nears Construction - New Carlisle’s trail construction plans move forward – The City of New Carlisle has for some time been working on the Tecumseh Trail. This DDN article says that they may start construction early in 2009 to complete the trail this year rather that next year that was the former schedule. To read the article Click Here or above. To see my webpage for the Tecumseh Trail Click Here. Source: Dayton Daily News.

Website Changes and Improvements

Updates to Links – Several times a year, I spend a week (or more) checking for broken links on my website. There are two kinds of them.
- First there are internal links; that is a link from one page on my website to another page on the site. Only if I remove something or rename something do I get those kinds of errors.
- Then there are external links. I get more errors when I link to some external website and the information either is moved or deleted. This provides more problems for me. When some webmasters provide a link to another website they link to its Home Page, not to the content. They leave this chore to you; to find the specific page that he (the webmaster) wants you to see. This makes it easier for him. Because he knows that the target website may move or delete the material, but by linking you to their Home Page, he knows that you (and he) won’t get a dead link. But in many cases you will not find the content.
- I approach links by trying to get you to the exact page that I want you to see. This adds work for me, when the target site moves or deletes the material I want you to see on their website. But I do it for your benefit. I do not links to Home Pages of gigantic websites that I have to search through to find the content and many times I waste time, don’t find it and get “upset” with the website that referred me to it.
- So what I have doing “A Lot Of” is removing dead links both internal and external from my website.
  YOU CAN HELP! If you find a dead link on one of my pages, please take a moment to write me an email. Try to be as specific as possible when you tell me about the problem so I can find it and fix it. THANK YOU
Miami County Trails Updates – I attended a meeting in Miami County recently where we talked about additional trails development in the county. For some time the primary task was to plan, seek funds and build the main trail North from Taylorsville MetroPark in Montgomery to Tipp City, Troy and Piqua to Sidney in Shelby County. Almost all of the 22 miles of the Great Miami River Recreation Trail (GMRRT), in Miami County trail has been built, funded or planned. For the past several years the township and city attendees of this monthly planning committee have also been planning lateral trails connecting to the GMRRT and running East or West. Shortly I will be adding one or more webpages to show all of the details of those planned trails in Miami County and connections to Darke and Champaign counties.

Tipp City Trails to Grow – (See above news article) Tipp City awarded a $108K contract to add to the existing Great Miami River Recreation Trail in Kyle Park South of downtown Tipp. The trail will be extended South through the park almost to its Southern border. This construction will enable Five Rivers MetroParks to build additional trail from here across Ross Road to the Northern border of Taylorsville MetroPark in Montgomery County.
Updates to Events Page – I added new links to some new events. (See below)
Updated Miami Valley Trails pages – I added new links to some new trails in Ohio. Earlier this year I spent over a week updating all of the links to other trails in Ohio.
Updated Maps Page – new map from OKI. I added a link to this website.

Photos & Information Wanted Department

None this month

Did you Know Department?

New OKI Bike Map of Region - Our friends at the Ohio, Kentucky & Indiana Council of Governments has done it again. See their new map of the region. I am already using it to find out information about the trails in the OKI region.
New Outdoors and Events Calendar - This calendar is from the new Go 4 The Outdoors Website. It's a website put up by several Outdoor Recreation Retailers that sponsor outdoor equipment and events. The calendar looks to be a good one.
Economic Benefits of Trails – In February’s newsletter, I told you about “The Adventure Summit” that Five Rivers MetroParks sponsors every year. It is held at Wright State University’s Student Union, and if you have attended you’ve missed something good. Besides all the booths for bike clubs, rock climbers, Volksmarchers, organizations and the like, there were a number of good seminars. One that I attended was given by Mr. Rory Robinson of the National Parks Service (NPS). The title of his presentation was: “Why Invest in Trails and Greenways – The Economic and other Benefits” I was very impressed by Mr. Robinson’s facts about the economic benefits of railtrails. I was so impressed that I asked him to send me copies of the handouts that he used for him presentation. He sent them and I will be adding some of all of them to my Trail Usage Statistics and Economic Benefits of Trails webpage.
- Here's an interesting tidbit from Mr. Robinson's handouts -
  - In the Yukon Territory , twice as many people bike to work as in California , and three times as many as in Florida . - Pucher, J., and R. Buehler, 2006, Why Canadians cycle more than Americans: A comparative analysis of bicycling trends and policies, Transport Policy, 13, 265-79

Announcements of Upcoming Events

See Upcoming Events Area

Greenway Getaways - (All Summer ) Greene County Parks has started a program of bicycle rides.
They will also be doing a set of night rides in 2009. Remember: riders must wear helmets and have lights on their bicycles,
and be 18 or older. All rides are Saturday night at 7:00 PM. (Additional information is on the Events Page)
Courteous Mass - Monthly street cycling rides - These rides will be held the first Friday of every month starting at 20 N. Jefferson St. in downtown Dayton. The rides are .5 hour and begin at 4:45 PM.(Additional information is on the Events Page)

Webpage of the Month

Mad River Recreation Trail - I selected the Mad River for this month since I spent some time above writing about the planned extension to it from its current end at Eastwood MetroPark to Huffman MetroPark. This single 2 mile extension will connect the City of Fairborn, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and Wright State University to the Miami Valley Trails System, as I have begun to call our wonderful, and growing, system of trails in the Miami Valley.

Regards to all,

Thomas J. Recktenwalt
Webmaster
Miami Valley RailTrails
http://www.miamivalleytrails.org

If you find these newsletters and my Miami Valley RailTrails website of use to you, please pass the information on to your friends and neighbors who might enjoy our Miami Valley Trails System, the wonderful system of multi-use trails in Southwest Ohio. Then they can write me and get on the mailing list to get their own copy of this newsletter. Our trail system is wonderful for walking, running, in-line skating, birding, fishing and cycling and on some trails horseback riding. You see more wildlife from one of our trails than most anyplace else. All of my newsletters are posted to my website at the same time I send you this text version. The URL for your use is: http://www.miamivalleytrails.org/join_our_mailing_list.htm

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