Bicycle Austin forum

Tom, thanks for posting this.  We have pieces of a circle the city bikeway in planning or nearing construction - namely on the northern and eastern sides of the city.  The Walnut Creek Trail will ultimately connect balcones district park just west of Mopac to Govalle Park just east of Airport Blvd - a 16 mile 12 foot wide fully ADA accessible concrete trail.   The first 3 mile phase is slated to go out to bid (Balcones to Walnut Creek Metro Park) in 2009, a contract for design has been awarded for the So. Walnut Creek Section from Govalle to just south of 290.  the section from Walnut Creek Metro Park to 1-35 is slated to go to design contract later this year as well.  This is the work of many years of work, starting in the mid-1990s and requiring a bond election in 1998 to purchase the land as well as help from Congress, namely Congressman Doggett.

That said, we need a lot more miles of trail or on-street facilities to help us both ring the city as well as connect our major trails.  there are are going number of groups and projects (Town Lake Trail Broadwalk, Walk for a Day, Oak Hill to Downtown Trails, Country Club Creek (town lake to Onion Creek) that are actively working on developing maps, building trails on the ground, getting land access, etc, but there's plenty of work to be done.

The Austin Parks Foundation (the organization I work for) has received two years of assistance from the National Park Service rivers, trails and conservation assistance program to help us revise a master trails plan for the greater austin area as well as a cookbook of how to navigate funding, development rules and more.  We'll be looking to all trail as well as on road bicycle facility advocates to help us in the public process as we get started a little later this year.  I'll keep you posted on upcoming meetings and opportunities.  We'll need everyone who is interested to be involved in this process.

Charlie McCabe
Austin Parks Foundation