Future of prairie paths may prove expandable

Chicago Tribune, Wednesday, April 23, 1997

By Rogers Worthington
Tribune staff writer

Built on an old railroad right of way, the Illinois Prairie Path proceeds straight as an arrow through Elmhurst and Villa Park.

"You get kind of bored with a straight route," said Judy Zimmerman, an Elmhurst resident who, with her husband, Carl, regularly bicycles on the trail. "It's a very good path if you're trying to keep in shape. You can pace yourself. But it's the same thing every time."

Regional planners had people such as the Zimmermans in mind when they decided to revise a 1992 plan for northeastern Illinois' network of trails and greenways.

The first step in the revision, a new report from the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC), proposes a much larger trail and greenway system. And within that system would be trail "loops" from 10 to 40 miles long that could take hikers or bicyclists to a destination, or return them to their starting points without forcing them to reverse course.

The new plan, if it becomes reality, would roughly quadruple the Chicago area's 475 miles of existing trails, and quintuple the 750 miles of protected greenways, said Ders Anderson, greenways director of the nonprofit Open Lands Project, which worked with NIPC to produce the plan.

Proposed new trails and greenways would extend south to the Indiana Dunes State Park and the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, north to the Wisconsin border and west to the Fox River Valley. Chicago's Grant Park would remain the system's eastern boundary.

For now, the plan is simply a wish list drafted by NIPC, the Chicago area's regional planning agency, with input from local and county planners. It will be the subject of a series of public hearings, at which bikers, hikers and public officials can voice their opinions.

Ultimately, it will fall to the counties and the communities along the paths of the proposed trails and greenways to come up with the money to buy land.

Talk of adding to the Chicago area's already extensive network of trails and greenways comes as a growing number of Americans take up walking, hiking, jogging, cycling and in-line skating.

"In the summer it's absolutely packed out here," said Zimmerman, who welcomes the idea of creating loops and links between trails and greenways.

Demand by Chicago bicyclists for access to suburban bike trails is believed to be so strong that Metra, the suburban commuter rail service, is considering a test project to remodel three of its retired two-level railroad cars so they can accommodate bicycle racks on the first level.

The cars would run on the Milwaukee Road West line from downtown Chicago to Elgin. There, bicyclists could connect with trails in the Fox River Valley.

Anderson anticipates such a route would be popular.

"Market demand for linear open space and trail opportunities has increased just exponentially," he said.

Along with providing more land as an outlet for recreation, planners view a trail system as a way to encourage alternate transportation. A 1995 study by the Chicago Area Transportation Study found that two-thirds of those using trails used them to travel somewhere they otherwise might drive.

"That's the key to the role of greenways in transportation -- as a linkage to a destination, whether a community destination, entertainment, school or, in some cases, to work," said Randy Neufeld, director of the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation and one of those who had input into the new NIPC/Open Lands proposal.

Not all greenways are trails, however. In fact, only half the greenways in the new plan are proposed as trails, Anderson said.

The push to protect natural areas adjacent to streams and rivers, especially important in flood plains, has led to the identification of more greenways where officials believe development should be prohibited, said Richard Mariner, land resources manager for NIPC.

In the Chicago area, most rivers and streams run north and south, resulting in a dearth of east-west greenways.

"If more were east-west, we would be able to connect more, so you can get on a loop instead of just going north or south," said Janice Roehll, a landscape architect with the Illinois Prairie Trail Authority.

But more opportunities for east-west greenways and trails are emerging with the identification of more abandoned railroad right of ways.

"It's a wonderful use of railroad right of way," said Tom Ballant, a Naperville banker who bicycles about 800 miles a year in the region's "Linear parks," as he calls them.

The Illinois Prairie Path, which runs along the old Chicago-Aurora electric line, was the nation's first greenway converted from a former railroad right of way.

Northeastern Illinois' network of trails and greenways have received a financial boost from a 1991 federal law called the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA). Much of the money earmarked by the law for transportation "enhancement" has gone for pedestrian and bicycle projects, including trails. More projects are assured of being built this year and next.

Meanwhile, 34 municipal and county governments in the region are seeking $3.7 million from the Federal Land and Water Conservation Fund and the state Open Space Land Acquisition and Development program for a variety of plans involving greenways.