thrice all american: Pierce County Trails Conference

Pierce County Trails Conference

· Posted Monday November 27, 2006 by jamie

Got back a bit ago from this evening’s Pierce County Trails Conference at UPS, which also served as the (brief) annual meeting for ForeverGreen (say it fast!), an advocacy organization for local pedestrian, bicycle, and equestrian trails. This was a great opportunity to hear about some of the individual trail projects going on around the county, in addition to hearing about the overarching goals of linking these projects to create non-motorized transportation infrastructure.

County Executive John Ladenburg opened the festivities with a keynote presentation that discussed several of the exciting trail projects: the Water Ditch Trail running from downtown through South Tacoma, the Cushman Trail along the Tacoma Power right-of-way in Gig Harbor, and the trail system at Chambers Properties were prominently mentioned, and Ladenburg shared a vision for one day being able to leave from the UWT campus via a trail on the Prairie Line right-of-way, travel south on the Water Ditch Trail, and eventually make it to the beaches below the new golf course at Chambers.

From here, a series of breakout sessions examined specific trail projects. I first attended a session about the Scott Pierson Trail, which is the trail that runs essentially parallel to Highway 16 starting near the Sprague interchange and eventually across the Narrows Bridge. Portions of this have existed for a long time, notably by Allenmore, but many improvements are being made concurrent with highway construction that should tie everything together. Currently, the stretch from Pearl to War Memorial Park is open, and the Tacoma sections should be fully open mid-Spring 2007. The trail will fully open mid-Summer 2007 concurrent to the opening of the bridge—the exciting thing here is that the new bridge will include a 10-foot-wide separated pathway for foot and bike traffic, which is a huge improvement over the pedestrian walkways on the old bridge.

The second breakout session I attended focused on the Cushman Trail, which travels under the Tacoma Power lines in Gig Harbor coming from Cushman Dam above Hood Canal. Through cooperation with Tacoma Public Utilities, the county is expanding this project in phases. The existing stretch is about 3 miles long, and they hope to add an additional 4 miles or so by early 2009. From there, the hope is to work towards Purdy and eventually onto Key Peninsula. One slight frustration here is that there is a bit of a disconnect between the terminus of the Scott Pierson trail which comes across the bridge and the beginning of the Cushman Trail.

The final breakout session I attended covered both the Puyallup Riverwalk Trail and the Chambers Properties. The Riverwalk trail sounds kind of neat, and shows potential to hook up to the Foothills Trail that runs through Sumner, Orting, South Priarie, Buckley, etc., towards the mountain (if they can acquire some key right-of-way), and also perhaps connections to a trail that might extend towards Tacoma. The Chambers Properties are huge, and encapsulate a huge amount of acreage—great views of the Sound, the bridge, some neat forestland in the creek canyon. It will be fun to check out the paths that meander through the golf course.

It’s great to hear about all these projects, but it is a little bit frustrating to look on the maps and see how we are so-close-yet-so-far to having a truly interconnected system of trails in the county. The Pierson trail gets from Central Tacoma to Gig Harbor, but doesn’t connect to the Cushman Trail in Gig Harbor, or the Water Ditch Trail, Pipeline Trail, etc., in Tacoma. The Chambers Creek Canyon Trail can get you up to Bridgeport, but that is a long way from the southern end of the Water Ditch Trail. And there is a long way to go in the quest to actually connect the various trails that could eventually extend from Mt. Rainier’s northwest corner all the way to Fife/Tacoma and eventually perhaps north into King County. Still, groups such as ForeverGreen are working on keeping long-range goals in the picture, remaining visionary about connecting these trails, and dreaming up future ideas (such as a trail along the rail right of way from Tacoma out through Eatonville, Elbe, Ashford, etc., to the Nisqually Entrance of Mt. Rainier). It sounds like a lot of hard work, but I think it bodes well for the walkers and bikers of our area…

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