$5 Million Beltine Donation To Fund Piedmont Park to DeKalb Ave Bike Trail
Decatur Metro | June 19, 2010 | 2:45 pm
From CL’s Thomas Wheatley…
And it’s legit: Beltline officials expect to begin construction this fall on a bike trail that would connect Piedmont Park to DeKalb Avenue.
Mayor Kasim Reed, city councilmembers and project officials this morning accepted two checks — each for $2.5 million — from Kaiser Permanente and the PATH Foundation on behalf of Sarah and Jim Kennedy at a scorching event along the Beltline’s northeast segment near the Masquerade. A project spokesman says the trail would open to walkers and cyclists next summer.
Nearly two years in the making, the trail project will connect the city’s most iconic greenspace and the Morningside, Ansley Park, Midtown, Poncey-Highland and Old Fourth Ward neighborhoods before ending at DeKalb Avenue.
Wheatley hopes the donations bring more attention to the Beltline project and perhaps even help secure more Federal funding in the future.
Map courtesy of Beltline.org
As near as I can figure it, that leaves about a half mile gap between the end of the dedicated PATH lanes on Dekalb, and connection to this larger network in Freedom Park. You have to kind of wend your way through Candler park on surface streets, but they’re pretty low traffic. So next Summer, ambitious folks could bike or run from Decatur to Piedmont Park with just a little bit of time on residential streets. That is really, really wonderful news.
Daren–any idea why that part can’t be filled in too? I find the McClendon part quite scary on my one-speed!
What’s the blue line with the arrows in the graphic? The path is the orange line where the Beltline is, right?
The blue line is the Beltline bus tour route. The orange line is the Beltline boundary and the gray dotted line inside the orange line is the bike path itself.
Something I have wondered is if (when?) transit replaces all these trails, aren’t the bikers and walkers going to be screaming?
They are making the Beltline wide enough that when transit is put in there is still plenty of space for cyclists and pedestrians…so we were told on one of the tours.
I’m on this like a duck on a junebug!