By Adam Stewart
South Hutchinson City Council took the next step toward a bike and pedestrian path between Main Street and a nature trail last Monday night. It wasn’t until I talked with City Administrator Jeff Schenk on Tuesday that I realized what a neat addition this will be.
For starters, it will provide a new, safer access for the nature trail, near a pond the city hopes to develop for recreational use. It will run through the Liberty Links disc golf course and past Lionette Fields and the community building. That’s a nice starting point.
But the part I most appreciate is how it will connect to other, existing paths. The nature trail at its west end runs about 2 miles north to south, from Morton Salt to the Reno County Veterans Memorial. At its east end, it will connect to South Hutchinson’s Main Street path, which then connects to the path along State Street all the way to the Frank Hart Bridge. And just across the Arkansas River is the Jim P. Martinez Sunflower Trail in Hutchinson, which connects two of Hutchinson’s largest and most visited parks: Carey Park and Rice Park.
When South Hutchinson’s planned trail is completed, a pedestrian would be able to walk from the Veterans Memorial all the way to Rice Park—a distance of about 6 miles—while only crossing three streets where cross traffic doesn’t have to stop, Des Moines Avenue and Washington Street in South Hutchinson and traffic coming onto the Frank Hart Bridge from Hutchinson’s Main Street.
I’m not likely to ever walk or bike that full length, but I appreciate the project. It’s good when our communities can expand on existing assets. This goes a step further and spans the gap between assets with a shared purpose. By making that connection, a half mile of new trail effectively adds 2.5 miles to one trail system, and even more than that to the other.
Projects can’t always make those kinds of connections, but it is well worth looking for those opportunities in our communities. Another missing connection just begging to be made is between the Martinez Trail and the Bad Bobby Trail in northeast Hutchinson.
A recent path added along 30th Avenue between Main and Adams streets could become part of the solution to that gap. Maybe I have a soft spot for Farmington Park after seven years working with that neighborhood, but a connection along Farmington Road makes a lot of sense and would tie the park’s lovely new loop trail into things.