475-mile bicycle trail gains speed

(Date unknown -- webmaster)

BY LAURA JANOTA
Daily Herald Staff Writer

Quick: Name three of your favorite outdoor offerings in Illinois.

In the Chicago area, you've got to start with Lake Michigan's beautiful waterfront. Then there's the Mighty Mississippi to the west. And almost every suburban camper knows the legend behind Starved Rock State Park.

These are just a few of the stops along a 475-mile bike path -- dubbed the Grand Illinois Trail -- that may be nearing reality.

The Lake and McHenry county forest preserves, Rockford, Galena, the Quad Cities, Starved Rock State Park, Joliet, Navy Pier -- all would be stops along the way.

"People love connecting trails up. They just like the idea that they can do 475 miles if they want to," said Edward Hoffman, planning director for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. For story, see Page 7.

475-mile trail would be 'grand'

It's about 475 miles round-trip. About half the journey is via off-road trails.

The Lake and McHenry County forest preserves, Rockford, Galena, the Quad Cities, Starved Rock State Park, Joliet, Navy Pier -- all are stops along the way.

"When we first thought this thing up, people said `You've got to be kidding,'" said Edward Hoffman, planning director for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Only three years after the pie-in-the-sky tour through northern Illinois first was dreamed up, the ambitious Grand Illinois Trail may be nearing reality.

It's not important that most people will never travel all 475 miles.

"People love connecting trails up. They just like the idea that they can do 475 miles if they want to." said Hoffman.

What's key is that plans for the Grand Illinois Trail could be furthered by being given the nod for the first time next month by the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC).

The region's planning body is proposing that the Grand Illinois Trail project be part of a new six-county greenways plan that includes 1,963 miles of multiuse trails.

Though it could cost unspecified millions of dollars to complete, the Grand Illinois Trail -- as the hallmark of the NIPC plan -- would be well-positioned to receive federal funds, officials said.

"All the pieces are not quite linkable yet, but it appears to be attainable," said Robert Thornberry, head of site planning for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Since 1992, $87 million in federal, state and local funds have been spent building multiuse trails. Currently, there are 433 miles in place in the six-county region.

The new 20-year NIPC plan that is set to be finalized June 19 recommends more than quadrupling to 1,963 the number of miles of trails in the region's system.

"There's been a great deal of interest in creating loops and tying our trails together," said Richard Mariner, land resources manager for NIPC.

It's not only Grand Illinois that regional planners want funded.

For instance, the NIPC plan calls for a multiuse trail along the Des Plaines River from Lake County's northern boundary to the existing Illinois Prairie Path near Maywood.

Key to the plan is a bridge connection over the Des Plaines River near Maywood linking cyclists to a Chicago Transit Authority el stop.

Such a connection would pave the way for DuPage County residents using the existing Illinois Prairie Path to access Chicago trails and the Grand Illinois Trail that would begin at Navy Pier.

Such a connection also would bring the existing Fox River Trail in Kane County into the loop.

The push for funding the Grand Illinois Trail also will put its segments planned for Lake and McHenry counties very much on the front burner, Mariner predicted.

In Lake County, the forest preserve district is working to link the existing North Shore Bike Path that ends in Libertyville with a western loop trail, said Joe Roth, a project consultant.

That trail would begin at Carmel High School, run through Mundelein, the Lakewood preserve and through Wauconda to link up with a McHenry County path at Moraine Hills State Park, he said.

The McHenry County segment is proposed to run primarily along right of way on the Union Pacific's Northwest line from Crystal Lake and Harvard.

That route is only in its infancy stages of discussion, however, and likely will have to be changed if agreements can't be reached with Union Pacific, state and NIPC officials said.

With about 150 miles in place and 100 miles ready for construction, the 475-mile Grand Illinois system is expected to be completed by 2000.

"If we get it (Grand Illinois Trail) in the plan, it makes it a bigger deal and more likely it will be done," said Hoffman.

(NOTE: for more information on the Grand Illinois Trail, see the related article.)