Tag: Conner Creek Greenway

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Greenways Newsletter

News from the Trail – April 2019

Fundraiser at the Velodrome this Saturday

This Saturday, April 20th will be more than just another exciting evening of bicycle track racing at the Lexus Velodrome. It’s also a fundraiser for the Detroit Greenways Coalition. If you not yet seen high-speed track bike racing at Detroit’s newest sports venue, this is a great opportunity to do so. It’s the Spring Track Classic and will attract top racers from across the region. Doors open at 6:30pm and the racing begins at 7:30pm. Tickets are available in advance and start at just $10.

Of course Saturday is also Earth Day and the Detroit City Council Green Task Force is hosting its Awards Breakfast. The event runs from 10am until noon, is free and open to the public. It’s being held at JBEW Local 58 (1358 Abbott). RVSP if you plan on attending.

One more event to put on your calendar is Bike to Work Day on Friday, May 17th. Make you pledge to ride that day to receive an event shirt and commemorative patch. More details are on our website.

FCA Expansion to impact greenways & trails

You may have read the news of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) planning to expand their Jefferson North manufacturing in the city of Detroit. They need more land for this and the city has offered to give them St. Jean Street which currently has bike lanes for the Conner Creek Greenway and the Iron Belle Trail. We’ve discussed options with our partners and developed ideas for alternative routings. We’ve also asked that we not lose the existing protected bike lanes on Conner and East Jefferson, which both border the FCA footprint. We’ve shared our proposals with elected officials, city staff, FCA officials, and our partners. Our entire proposal with maps is on our website.

Ultimately, we’d love to see the local community, city of Detroit, and FCA all arrive at a mutually beneficial solution that also improves green transportation options throughout the lower eastside. This project is moving quickly so we’ll be sure to stay on top.

Joe Louis Greenway Updates

Last month, the City of Detroit announced that the SmithGroup and its team had been selected to complete the Joe Louis Greenway Framework Plan. The SmithGroup has extensive greenway experience which includes designing the Dequindre Cut and Detroit Riverwalk. The City also announced that “an advisory council has been created, comprised of community members from each Detroit City Council District impacted by the route.”

We have three Joe Louis Greenway bike tours in the works. The first is our 24-mile fundraiser ride scheduled for June 23rd. We’re also working with the Wheelhouse Detroit on two shorter 16-mile tours on August 24th and September 28th.

Visit Detroit celebrates bicycling

You may already know how fun and cool bicycling in Detroit is. Others don’t, but that will be changing a bit with the Spring-Summer 2019 Visit Detroit magazine published by the Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The cover photo itself really shows how Detroiters are redefining American bicycling with customized, stylish bikes, matching attire, lights, and tunes. We couldn’t be happier seeing our friend Tracy (on the left) with her one-of-a-kind ride (BAM!). On her right are riders visiting from Ohio, not unlike the many other riders coming here from across the region to be a part of this movement.

And that’s not all. They also made this exciting video about Slow Roll that will get you ready for the summer of riding ahead of us.

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Greenways

FCA Expansion and the nearby greenways and trails

  • The FCA Expansion at Jefferson North will have major impacts on the surrounding greenways and trails.
  • Vacating St. Jean Street removes a critical segment of the Conner Creek Greenway and Iron Belle Trail. Fortunately both can be re-routed.
  • Improved greenways and trails, green space, green stormwater infrastructure, and public access to the riverfront should all be included as part of this expansion.

Below is our letter to city officials, the neighborhood advisory council, and FCA that details the impacts and proposed solutions to the FCA Expansion impacts.

The Detroit Greenways Coalition (DGC) supports the City’s effort to bring more manufacturing jobs to Detroit through the proposed Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) Mack Avenue Assembly Complex on the city’s east side.  Our organizations focus is to encourage and protect a network of greenways, green spaces for non-motorized transportation for community use. As this plan is further developed we are concerned about losing the existing non-motorized infrastructure around the proposed plant, including portions of the Conner Creek Greenway and Iron Belle Trail.

We would like to see that the development plans are aware of these existing features and that they be either protected or reconfigured to meet community needs.  We also see this project as an opportunity to replace the lost “green spaces” and add even more “green” to the area through additional trees and appropriate green storm water infrastructure (GSI).

Mitigating the loss of St. Jean

Currently both the Conner Creek Greenway (CCG) and Iron Belle Trail (IBT) use the existing bike lanes and bike sharrows on St. Jean from Kercheval to Warren. The CCG master plan used both St. Jean and Conner Street. It made St. Jean the primary route due to it having less truck traffic, fewer curb cuts, and more greenery compared with Conner St. The CCG has less flexibility in using other routes since it follows the historic route of the Conner Creek, must cross I-94 at Conner Avenue, and terminates at Maheras-Gentry Park.

Any changes to the CCG should be discussed with the Detroit Eastside Community Collaborative (DECC), the CDC that developed and implemented this greenway.

The IBT joins the CCG at Kercheval and heads north with it beyond Eight Mile Road. We believe the IBT could be routed differently to avoid St. Jean. However, bringing the IBT to the plant would be a great opportunity to highlight Detroit’s automotive heritage.

DGC Recommendations

FCA and the City of Detroit should:

  1. Work with the DGC and DECC to move the CCG primary routing from St. Jean (and a portion of Shoemaker) to Conner. This would also require the city make improvements to existing protected bike lanes so that they are continuous on both sides of the E. Warren intersection. It would also require updates to existing CCG wayfinding.
  2. Improve the existing Conner bike lanes by replacing the posts with curbs and GSI infrastructure. Improve access management along the corridor to consolidate curb cuts.
  3. Work with the DGC to propose routing of the IBT preferably along a new shared-use path along the western boundary of the FCA footprint. This could be a good opportunity to highlight the Dodge Brothers history with bicycle design, racing, and manufacturing.
  4. Support ongoing efforts with the E. Jefferson streetscape project.
  5. Maintain and/or improve the existing buffered bike lanes on the Mack Avenue Bridge.
  6. Plan and implement a non-motorized route around the boundaries of the FCA footprint. Such a route would be approximately 5K (3.2 miles) when Mack is used and could be incorporated into future FCA wellness and community programing.
  7. Incorporate more trees and GSI into all of the above recommendations. An Alliance for the Great Lakes/DGC study has already identified potential green storm water infrastructure site along this corridor and should be used.
  8. Preserve green space and public access to the river at the location of the DTE Conner Creek Power Plant. The 2012 Visions of Greenways plan for the Greater Riverfront East District called for an extension of the RiverWalk adjacent to, if not through these parcels. The DTE-FCA land transfer should not jeopardize that vision for a publicly accessible non-motorized greenway along the riverfront.
  9. Coordinate all infrastructure efforts with Great Lakes Water Authority’s plans for a new water line from Waterworks Park to their Northeast Water Treatment Plant.
  10. Manage truck traffic through street design to ensure it remains on the designated truck routes and minimizes conflicts with bicyclists and pedestrians.
  11. Provide funding and support for educational materials letting motorists and bicyclists how to drive or ride safely around the neighboring streets.

 

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Greenways

Top 5 Detroit bike and trail projects for 2015

Let’s start by saying it’s not easy picking only five — and that speaks well about all that is happening to make the city of Detroit a better place for biking and trails. But here we go in no specific order…

Link Detroit

Link Detroit project for Tiger-IIIThis multi-faceted $20 million non-motorized project will be completed by the summer. Yes, it was supposed to be completed by last November but construction was delayed with unexpected utility issues and a polar vortex.

What does this project involve?

  • Extending the Dequindre Cut from Gratiot to Mack Avenue with a additional connecting trail into Eastern Market along the north side of Wilkins.
  • Adding bike lanes from the end of the Cut to Hamtramck, mostly along St. Aubin. These are done.
  • Replacing three bridges over the Dequindre Cut. If you’ve ridden the pothole-ridden Wilkins bridge before then you know this is good news for bicyclists.
  • Improving Russell Street. This mostly focuses on pedestrian improvements, but it also include some very nice bike parking stations.
  • Adding bike lanes and a Midtown Loop path connection from Eastern Market to Midtown.

We thought it would be invaluable to count how many people are using this new section of the Dequindre Cut, so we got the DEGC (who’s managing the project) to add 3 automated bike and pedestrian counters.  These will count 24/7 and the data will be part of the Coalition’s much larger city wide effort to count usage and document trends.

Inner Circle Greenway

Inner Circle GreenwayDetroit city staff refer to this as the “mother of all non-motorized projects.” If you’ve not heard about it before, the Inner Circle Greenway is a 26-mile pathway that encircles the city of Detroit while passing through Hamtramck, Highland Park, and a little bit of Dearborn. It makes use of existing trails such as the Southwest Detroit Greenlink, RiverWalk, and Dequindre Cut, so roughly half of the pathway is complete. For all these reasons and more, it is a very high-priority project for our Coalition.

The largest gap is an 8.3 mile segment of abandoned railroad property. If all goes as planned, we expect Detroit will purchase the property this year using $4.5 million in grant funding the Coalition helped secure. We will be making another announcement soon about additional grant funding for planning. We will also work with the city on a substantial federal grant to build out the Greenway while also trying to get funding for more community engagement.

Lastly, we are finalizing some nice new maps of the trail. We’ll have those by the bike show in March.

Conner Creek Greenway

This Greenway begins at Maheras Gentry Park on the Detroit River and heads north roughly following Conner Avenue. It’s a mix of bike lanes, shared roadway, and off-road paths — and it’s nearly complete. This year it will get extended from Conner along E. Outer Drive to Van Dyke, crossing Eight Mile, and ending at Stephens Road (9.5 mile.) While this seems like a modest project for the top five, one should consider how many organizations were involved in making this happen: Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, Detroit Eastside Community Collaborative, Nortown CDC, Eight Mile Boulevard Association, the Detroit Greenways Coalition, City of Warren, City of Detroit, SEMCOG, Wayne County and two MDOT TSCs.

It also is significant since it crosses Eight Mile and is part of the Showcase Trail between Belle Isle and Wisconsin. Look for plenty of green bike lanes in Warren’s section.

Separated bike lanes in Chicago via NACTO
Separated bike lanes in Chicago via NACTO

E. Jefferson Bike Lanes

A very short segment of E. Jefferson will get bike lanes this year from Alter Road to Lakewood. Why is this a big deal? They’ll be the first separated (aka protected) bike lanes in Southeast Michigan. This is precedent setting and could serve as a model for all of Detroit’s major spoke roads.

East Jefferson Inc. is also working with other members of the GREEN Task Force and the city of Detroit to extend those bike lanes to the Belle Isle entrance at E. Grand Boulevard.

Cass Avenue Bike Lanes and Midtown Loop

Bike counting kiosk example from Montreal
Bike counting kiosk example from Montreal

M1-Rail is creating a major cycling safety hazard on Woodward by locating streetcar rails near the curbs where bicyclists ride. As a result, the FTA and MDOT agreed to make Cass Avenue a more attractive cycling option. This summer Cass will be getting bike lanes (some buffered) from W. Grand Boulevard to Lafayette. A mixture of bike lanes, sharrows, and off-road paths will connect Cass to the RiverWalk via Lafayette, Washington Boulevard, E. Jefferson, and Bates.

But that’s not all. Public bike repair stations and air pumps will be installed along with automated counters including two kiosks that display bike counts in real-time. Those counts will also be automatically uploaded and available on the web as well.

This project also completes the final leg of the Midtown Loop along Cass Avenue between Canfield and Kirby.

Honorable Project Mentions

  • The Detroit Riverfront Conservancy should complete two new sections of the RiverWalk in 2015: Chene Park East and Chene Park West. A third project will begin later this year that connects the current dead end near Riverplace to Chene Park East.
  • The Downtown Detroit Partnership is becoming our non-motorized champion in the downtown area. They are currently developing a plan for sorely needed biking connections. They’re looking to take the best of what New York City, Chicago, Portland have done and bring it here, which couldn’t happen soon enough.
  • We really need to mention the amazing work of the Detroit Public Lighting Authority. Their ongoing installation of new LED street lights is making biking and walking much safer. Pardon the bad joke, but it’s like night and day.

Complete Streets ordinance

This is not really a project but a policy change that the Coalition, Detroit Food and Fitness Collaborative and others have been working on for years. We expect it to go before a City Council vote this year and we’d be surprised if it didn’t pass. For more information, check out Detroit Complete Streets page.

No, we didn’t mention the public bike sharing or the Uniroyal Site. We need to save some projects for future years!