A bicycle trail envisioned to allow cyclists to pedal from Chicago to Wisconsin could be left with a permanent 6.8-mile gap if federal funds are chopped from a new five-year transportation bill, local leaders and transportation advocates said.
A four-suburb effort to provide the missing link in the Skokie Valley Trail lost a bid for federal “rail-to-trail” funds in November — money that’s essential to completing the project, town leaders said.
The Skokie Valley Trail provides walkers, joggers and bicyclists with a dedicated path beginning at Highland Park’s southern edge and meandering north, paralleling Highway 41, to Lake Bluff, where it meets with another trail that continues to Kenosha, Wis.
Skokie and Lincolnwood were awarded federal grant program money that allowed them to begin design and construction work on parts of a paved path from Chicago’s northern border. It was planned to connect through Wilmette, Northfield, Northbrook and Glenview, where leaders had aligned in 2006 to work toward a lease for unused Union Pacific railroad property in order to extend the Skokie Valley Trail between Old Orchard Road and Lake-Cook Road.
The four towns were notified in November that their $6.8 million grant request was denied, and leaders say they can’t afford to foot the bill with local funds alone.
“It’s such an important connection between the metro connection and the trails that go all the way up north to Kenosha,” said Eric Oberg, a manager of trail development for Rails-to-Trails, an advocacy group.
The organization has been watching the House debate over a proposed five-year transportation spending bill. The previous six-year transportation bill expired in 2010, after which two consecutive one-year extensions were approved by Congress. It included $2 billion dollars for pedestrian and bicycling efforts — 2 percent of the total outlay, Oberg said.
Funds for two key programs, Safe Routes to School and Transportation Enhancements, are eliminated in the proposed bill, the latter being the largest funding source for bicycle trails, he said.
“If this legislation ends up in the final bill as written, it completely guts every substantial trail — biking and walking — opportunity in the country,” Oberg said. “There’s no softer way to put it.”
An amendment sponsored by two Illinois Congressmen — Dan Lipinski, a Democrat, and Timothy Johnson, a Republican — along with Tom Petri, R-Wisconsin, could have restored funding. It failed in the U.S. House of Representatives’ Transportation and Infrastructure Committee by two votes on Feb. 2, dealing a significant setback to cycling advocates. Johnson and Petri, along with Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey, were the only Republicans to vote for the amendment, which was otherwise decided by a party-line vote.
The north suburban Skokie Valley Trail is a prime example of how the proposed cuts could negatively affect Chicagoland, said Daniel Persky, director of policy and planning for the Chicago-based Active Transportation Alliance.
“We are very concerned about this and we’re doing everything we can to preserve dedicated funding for projects like the Skokie Valley Trail,” Persky said.
“It’s critical to the future of the trail,” he said. “It would be pretty much impossible without it to get it made.”
That sentiment was acknowledged by representatives of the four villages that stand to leave a gaping hole in the trail between Lake County and Chicago.
When representatives from Wilmette, Northfield, Northbrook and Glenview first came together in 2006, funding wasn’t the primary hurdle — it was simply getting Union Pacific to come to the table to negotiate a lease on their unused property.
“That was a long drawn-out process. We couldn’t even get them to talk to us for a number of years,” said Linda Gittel, Northfield’s representative on the four-community study panel. The communities reached out to political contacts, such as local state representatives, to hopefully turn Union Pacific’s head. They even hired a railroad attorney. It wasn’t until the group went to the top of Union Pacific’s chain of command that they elicited action from the railroad giant.
“We finally went to the top of UP, to the president, and as the heads of most companies will do, word trickled down to look into this,” Gittel said.
A 2007 feasibility study provided an outline for realizing the project.
Union Pacific and village representatives were still negotiating a long-term lease for the property when it was announced in November that a $6.8 million Congestion Mitigation/Air Quality Improvement Program grant request was denied.
“That kind of put a crimp in terms of continuing our discussions with UP,” Gittel said.
Essentially, it put a dead-end on the bike trail extension program. None of the four villages can afford to fund the engineering, design and construction of the project, representatives said.
“Our municipal budgets can’t support the engineering studies or land acquisition required to move forward,” said Wilmette Village Engineer Brigitte Mayerhofer. “Without outside funding it’s just not going to progress, unfortunately.”
Northbrook still has $2.5 million outlined in its multi-year capital improvement program, which is still in draft form, according to David Schoon, director of the village’s economic development department. The village has no plans to seek additional grant funds this year, and he acknowledged the difficulty in shoring up outside funding if federal cuts are enacted in the new transportation bill.
Northfield, Gittel said, had the most at stake of the four communities. While the proposed trail is mostly along the outer edges of the others, the virtually abandoned railroad tracks run through the center of Northfield, dividing a Dominick’s grocery store from the village’s public library and post office.
“It would have made a wonderful thing to have — a bike and walking trial, versus old tracks that no one cleans up,” Gittel said.
Skokie and Lincolnwood had already ironed out their land acquisition details before the other four towns to the north, which helped give them priority in obtaining federal funds to begin the design and construction of portions of the Skokie Valley Trail between Dempster Road and Chicago’s northern border, officials said.
Andy Cohen said he and his family moved to Highland Park partly for its proximity to bicycle trails. He frequently rides his bike on the Skokie Valley Trail to his job at Abbott Laboratories. It takes about 50 minutes, as opposed to the 30 it’d take by driving a car, but it saves money.
“Not to mention I’m not a part of the problem and I’m not making Arab sheiks rich every time I go to work,” Cohen said.
He said he was looking forward to a day when he could take Skokie Valley south to Chicago, noting that other bicycle trails into the city are more twisting, recreational routes.
The Skokie Valley Trail “shows good planning because it’s straight, and it gets you there fast,” Cohen said.
