An Important Route

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In this month's issue of Out There Monthly, I wrote a column about the Iron Bridge. The bridge is a hugely important connection to hook up East Central to downtown for bike/ped traffic. In the map above, I've traced out a route that I think is probably one of the most important bike routes the city could attempt as we build the Master Bike Plan.

The neighborhoods of East Central and Chief Gary can be difficult neighborhoods to traverse by bike. The river, active rail lines, Trent, Sprague, and Mission avenues are just a few of the giant obstacles that make this part of town difficult to get through by bike. Putting in the Iron Bridge is a huge first step to transforming this area, but it's not the only thing that needs to get done. The city needs to capitalize on all of the core pieces of infrastructure that it already owns, and hook them together with the route above.

Moving counter clockwise from the Iron Bridge, go south on Helena. This stretch of road is huge and pretty light traffic. It would be easy to fit bike lanes here and preserve parking and still have room for car traffic. There's a light at Trent, so crossing there is pretty straight forward.


Then east on Riverside: shared/signed roadway to Altamont, where you go north a block to the Playfair site. The Playfair site is so cool. Last I heard, the city is thinking of a prison here. That is so awful and is the last thing that this already-struggling neighborhood needs. Anyway, the city owns this. There should be a big fat multi-use trail through here to the east end where the route would cross Fiske over the tracks.


The Fiske street foot bridge is another hidden gem: a safe/existing way over the huge gash that is the otherwise uncrossable live railroad. This is a hugely valuable piece of bike/ped infrastructure that is already used by commuters today.

Now, the piece from the Fiske bridge to Riverton/SCC is still murky to me. I've ridden around out here and I need to ride the piece that I show here. Crossing Trent here is no picnic and would cost some money to do right, but there are no other lights for at least 1/4 mile in each direction, so there would not be any issue with back ups if you put a ped/bike-friendly signal here.

Once you get to SCC, you can follow the trail that parallels Riverton Ave (amazingly, once again: a critical and valuable piece of infrastructure owned by the city; this is a river front trail we're talking about here -- the city has an easement). Follow the trail back to the city core, where you hit Mission and another live railroad trestle before you connect back with the Iron Bridge.

Aside from the Iron Bridge, going under the Mission street bridge and the other live trestle, are surely the most expensive infrastructure pieces in this route. But doing so makes a clean shot to SCC: from downtown to SCC all on multi-use (no traffic) trails.

This route would open up the East Central, Chief Gary, and Logan neighborhoods to bike and ped through traffic. I think this route would also improve the property values and private investment along the route. Today, traversing east/west through the core of our city by bike is not something new cyclists are likely to try.