Projects To Link Valley Bikeways:

Network of trails draws enthusiasts

By Dale Dempsey, 

Dayton Daily News

May 6, 2001 -- There are bicycle tours through Ireland, daylong rides through rolling green hills traveling from country inn to country inn for the night.

There are bicycle trips through England, France, Italy and Spain, where riders can stay cheaply in hostels, ride along picturesque riverbanks and canals.

But you need not travel so far for such a bicycle adventure.

The Miami Valley's intricate network of multi-purpose trails offer a similar opportunity, complete with rivers, hostels and cafes.

In the eastern valley already you can ride from Springfield to Milford, near Cincinnati. The trail, which follows the scenic Little Miami River, has a growing number of bed and breakfasts, hostels, bike shops and rental shops and restaurants popping up just off the path to serve riders.

The Great Miami River corridor does not have a continuous path to Cincinnati, and has not seen the growth of small businesses that serve the trails, but that could change.

There are plans to offer a similar path in western Montgomery County that would reach from Dayton through Warren and Butler counties to Hamilton. Hamilton has received a $2 million endowment to improve and expand its bikeways.

The project is called the Great Connection and would wind past historical sights such as Franklin's first post office and Middletown's historical districts. The bikeway, which is being planned by the Miami Conservancy District at a cost of about $8 million, would preserve a strip of open space along the Great Miami River.

The Great Connection has received a $1.3 million dollar grant from the Ohio Department of Transportation to begin the work. The local match required by the grant is being funded by six jurisdictions — Franklin, Franklin Twp., Carlisle, Springboro, Clearcreek Twp. and Warren County.

Montgomery County, with 216 miles of trails overall and plans to add more, now faces the challenge of linking up all the various paths into a single system. The area will have one of the premier destination points for bicyclists in RiverScape in downtown Dayton when it opens later this month.

"RiverScape has been kind of bittersweet for bicyclists the past few years," said Gary Boulanger, director of Bike Miami Valley. "There have been lots of grandiose renovation going on, and it has taken planning and engineering time away, but in time RiverScape will be the missing link which will allow people to enjoy all points."

Five Rivers MetroParks will be working on some of those links this summer.

"I think by this time next year you'll see a lot has been done," Boulanger said.

Julie Chmiel, new owner of English Manor, a bed and breakfast in Miamisburg on the bikeway, would like to see it happen.

"A bed and breakfast is just the perfect atmosphere for a bikeway," she said.

People in Greene County know the economic and aesthetic value of its section of the Little Miami Scenic Trail, which makes a 72-mile run from Springfield to Milford, outside of Cincinnati. It has given the region a national reputation for the quality of the bike paths.

"I had a guy who flew into here from Staten Island just to rollerblade," said Lorene Kolb, owner of Barrett House, a B&B in Spring Valley.

Kolb, who opened the B&B three years ago because of its proximity to the bikeway, said at least 75 percent of her business is from cyclists.

"They come in from all over, Indiana, Michigan," she said. "They will ride south one day and north the next. I let them use the garage for storage, because some of the bikes cost $4,000."

Some riders create two- and three-day trips, Kolb said.

"One group rode here from Loveland, then rode on to the Alpha House in Beavercreek," she said.

Greene County has 50 miles of bike trails. Montgomery County's system has 125 miles of connected trails and 216 miles overall.

Building and maintaining bikeways is expensive. Greene County Parks and Recreation patrols, maintains and manages the network. Jim Schneider, the county's trail manager, estimates that it costs from $3,900 to $12,000 a mile a year to take care of the trails.

"We mow weekly and are always clearing and trimming," Schneider said.

However, Schneider said that he has met people from all over the United States on the trails.

"The economic plus is obvious," he said.

Not all the visitors to the trails in Greene County, one of the first to embrace bikeways, are from the United States.

"I have six to eight people coming in next week from Cambridge, Ontario," Schneider said. "They want to copy our system."

Tim Leiwig, director of Greene County's Parks and Recreation department, said that one group flew into the Greene County airport, unpacked their bicycles and rode off.

Leiwig said that the opening this month of RiverScape in Dayton and the completion of the National Park Services Interpretation Center at Huffman Prairie should increase interest in biking in the area.

Greene County is working to finish the Kaufman Avenue portion of the network, which will connect to Huffman Prairie.

The county also has plans to link to the Ohio to Erie trail, a 426-mile path that would link the Ohio River to Lake Erie. It is scheduled for completion in five years.

Leiwig credits the development of the Greene County network to his predecessor, Ed Dressler.

"He had the vision to know the railroads would be abandoning these trails and took it on as a task," Leiwig said.

Finding money to build new trails is a grant-writing game, as communities seek state, federal and local funds. Some must be matched by local contributions.

"You have to have your homework done up front," Leiwig said. "And have a track record."

Cyclist George Danison of Wilmington, resting recently along the bikeway in Yellow Springs, said he would like to see the network worked into the city.

"With rising gas prices it gives people a good alternative," he said.

In Montgomery County, Five Rivers MetroParks has always worked bikeways and parks into urban settings, and plans to do more.

Sometime this summer, MetroParks plans to begin the first phase of linking the Great Miami Trail to the River Corridor bikeway at Triangle Park, according to director Charlie Shoemaker. The trail, which now runs from Taylorsville to Rip Rap Road, will be extended to Fishburg Road by next year. After that's completed, the plans call for extending the bikeway under Needmore Road, creating an access point at Kittyhawk Golf Course, and following the levy to Triangle Park.

"Eventually, we want to take Taylorsville north to the Miami County line," Shoemaker said. "Someday Tipp City, Troy and Piqua, all along the Great Miami, will be linked to Dayton."

MetroParks, with more flexibility due to last year's passage of a new levy, also plans over the next 10 years to:

 Extend the Wolf Creek trail into the Wright-Dunbar neighborhood.

 Build a connector between Englewood and the Wolf Creek bikeway.

 Build a bikeway through the Englewood spillway, along the Stillwater River corridor to approximately where Good Samaritan North stands.

 Connect the Eastwood Park bikeway to Huffman Dam, where riders can pick up the Mad River bikeway, which goes to Huffman Prairie.

 With an 100 percent grant from the Ohio Department of Transportation, build a pedestrian-bike bridge over Spinning Road, where riders headed from the Greene County portion of the Creekside trail are forced to cross the road.

 Extend a portion of the Montgomery County Creekside Trail to link up with the Kettering bikeways.

In southern Butler and Warren counties, West Chester, Liberty and Deerfield townships and the cities of Hamilton, Fairfield and Mason have formed a coalition to build an East-West bikeway connecting the Little Miami and Great Miami corridors.

The Miami-2-Miami connector is just the latest effort to link existing bikeways throughout southwest Ohio and northern Kentucky.

Boulanger concedes that this area is not like biking in Colorado or Europe.

"But there are pockets of professional riders here," he said, "and as far as bicycling friendliness, it's quite impressive."

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