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Public Affairs coverage from our award-winning staff |
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Rail Trail Eyed for Bike Trail
Produced by Ken Davis on Tuesday, March 11, 2008
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Photo by Elizabeth Slabaugh |
In Paris, there's a landscaped, elevated bikeway more than a mile long, reclaimed from old railroad property. Another has just opened in Manhattan. Now, community organizers around Bucktown and Humboldt Park say there should be one in Chicago too. They envision biking, Rollerblading and jogging for three miles without a stop sign. The city of Chicago and some powerful funders are teaming up to help make it happen.
It's a brutally cold Valentine's Day eve, and a few dozen people are crammed into WeeGees Lounge on Armitage. They're scratching images of hearts and kids and pets onto little tiles that will be glazed, fired, and, hopefully, one day, displayed along the concrete walls of a 24-block-long park.
UNKNOWN SPEAKER: My cat Tofu.
The thirty bucks these folks are paying does buy them a 3-by-3 tile, but more importantly it helps sustain a little group that has a dream. Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail wants to save the old fragment of abandoned railroad viaduct that parallels Bloomingdale Avenue. It's about 1700 north - from about Lawndale on the West to Ashland on the east.
In the early years of the 20th century, this little rail spur was booming - it served light industry here along Bloomingdale and stretched out to the steel processors and heavy manufacturing along Elston and onto Goose Island. Until at least the mid-30's it even carried passengers, and there were stations here at Kedzie. But the world changed, so as heavy industry slowly gave way to Best Buy and Home Depot the little railroad died. And that's when Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail was born.
ROONEY: Well, we didn't pick the best day to be out here, did we?
Bloomingdale Board members Katy Rooney and Ben Helphand are encouraging me to climb up a sheer wall of ice, so we can take a short walk along the Bloomingdale on a windy, bitter afternoon.
HELPHAND: The beauty of this is that when the trail is actually built we're gonna have ADA accessible ramps… uh huh. It'll be easier to get up than it is now. A couple of stumbles, some slippin' and slidin', and soon we're on our way.
So let's go. Let's go for a walk.
HELPHAND: Yea, we're walking actually between the tracks right now, in the snow, fifteen feet up in the air on a giant earth embankment.
ROONEY: It feels like a little canyon.
HELPHAND: For me it's one thing to talk about what it's gonna look like physically and what the amenities are gonna be like. But I try to imagine how it's gonna be used.
ROONEY: and how do we have the trail, you know do we have a walking trail or a biking trail - those are all things we're involved in doing right now and getting the community's input
So where are we, what is this?
HELPHAND: This - we are now taking our first steps over Humboldt Boulevard. And if we look to our right now we look to the northern tip of Humboldt Park.
And this is here the trail connects with Chicago's wonderful boulevard system. This is where it creates this sort of missing east-west corridor that was never completed on that boulevard system. And to me this is my favorite spot of the trail.
Ben Helphand, Katy Rooney and many others have been living this dream for years, and it may be another decade before it's a reality. By some estimates, the whole project could cost fifty million. Bridges have to be replaced. The trail has to be paved. They'll need benches, landscaping, lighting - and six miles of fencing along the edges.
HELPHAND: Well, as soon as you climb up here, the space just cries out to become a park, and a trail and a greenway, It's as if there's no other option for it.
Helphand and friends have some powerful allies. Mayor Daley's on board, as is the Park District, the Departments of Transportation, Planning and Environment, some major private foundations, and these folks.
WHITE: And what we looked at was where are the existing parks, where are the existing schools, and where's the best potential for new parks.
Beth White heads the Chicago Office of the Trust for Public land. They've been acquiring parcels of land every couple of blocks along the trail for small community parks that would act as access points to the trail. White says the first parks will come on line this year, so there will soon be some tangible results.
WHITE: So from where we're standing, looking to the east, again we've gotta jump over those Metra tracks, and then you have to cross over Elston.
This is one of her favorite spots. Under the Kennedy, but next to the Metra tracks and above Ashland and Cortland. The east end.
WHITE: Go past this big billboard, and then the red brick building on your right, and then those other grey buildings on the left.
And there it is - the gritty, industrial Chicago River.
WHITE: It could be an elegant overlook, it could be a place where people could sit and read a book.
WHITE: Or observe what's going on, on the river, and then, ultimately over time as you build toward that area on the trail, you'd link it up.
It'll be a while before you'll be riding the Bloomingdale Trail, but when it's built, The Friends of the Bloomingdale say these tracks that have separated Humboldt Park from Logan Square, and Wicker Park from Bucktown for so long will become an asset, linking communities together.
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Jerome Kareckas, Naperville // Tuesday, March 11, 2008 @ 12:38 PM
It is good to see this sort of effort to make use of unused 'paths' through the city. I wonder if the group has had contact with folks in Bloomington, IL, who have a number of routes through their city and the city of Normal.
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Marilyn Magnusson, Logan Square // Wednesday, March 12, 2008 @ 6:20 PM
I love this idea. I run in the neighborhood and have run on these tracks. It is a terrific space
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Andrew, New York // Friday, March 14, 2008 @ 2:09 PM
Having see the High Line (not open yet) I'd say this is a great idea but wouldn't a new transit line be useful as well? Though both require funds that the city doesn't have.
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