Blazing a trail
MOSES LAKE ‹ The yellow flashing lights atop Broadway Avenue are a signal to members of the Moses Lake Trails Planning Team.
Evident in the newly painted crosswalk at Dogwood Street and a series of adjacent basalt columns guiding walkers safely from Neppel to McCosh parks, Dogwood Court may be the first pedestrian link many in the community have noticed. But the links have been joining since the group initially formed as part of the Healthy Communities Project in 2001, and the countless neighborhood trails in the Moses Lake area are on their way to connecting one community.
"There's so many things that are happening," said city of Moses Lake city staffer and TPT member Lori Barlow.
Dogwood Court became operational earlier this year. City staff and TPT member Curt Carpenter said funding to rectify the unsafe crossing came from a number of sources, including attorney Julie Harper, the Moses Lake School District and the city of Moses Lake. Since it crosses a state highway, the project later needed approval from the Washington State Department of Transportation. An information kiosk on the Neppel Park side of the crossing has also been completed.
"It is a wonderful example of how partnerships can be formed," Barlow said of the project, which she said will begin to link Neppel Park to the rest of the community and provide a safe access for students on their way to school.
"It actually turned an eyesore right of way area to a place where people want to see," Carpenter said.
The project is one of many the group has been striving to complete since its formation. Its aim is to create a communitywide trails network to promote a healthy habits and safe routes for families and children on their way to school or work, and to create better pedestrian accesses to pending downtown redesign.
Joe Rogers is a co-chair of the TPT, and said while Dogwood may be the first visible crossing project the group has had, there have been others. Those other connecting projects are part of a master plan written by the group following a two-day planning session in 2003 and after gathering results from a communitywide questionnaire on the needs of Moses Lake trails.
"Basically people wanted to connect parks and waterfronts and schools," said TPT co-chair Bob Russell.
Since first writing their plan, some of the group's projects have been completed and others secured the funding needed to move forward. The group's six-inch thick trails master plan was adopted by the Moses Lake City Council last year, creating a blueprint in which future development in the city will accommodate a trails system.
The entire hub of this system begins and ends at McCosh Park, home to the city's amphitheater and adjacent to its aquatic center. The hub itself will soon boast an information center made of 16-foot basalt columns and maps of the trails system. When it is complete, TPT members said "Pillars of the Community" will be a trailhead and donation monument at the center of the system.
The next big project many in Moses Lake will notice is the 1.2-mile Heron Trail linking McCosh Park to the Japanese Peace Garden. The trail aims to create safe access for walkers and bikers across Division Street, and connects the two parks via trails and a boardwalk. A kayak park has been envisioned adjacent to the trail. Carpenter said the Heron Trail project is scheduled to go out to bid this fall.
Other major projects are also planned, like the connection of McCosh Park to the existing trail on Peninsula Drive which Carpenter said would complete a loop around the entire peninsula. Countless other projects have become a part of the TPT mandate, and Barlow points to the re-painting of a number of city streets to add bike lanes in an effort to make those streets more bicycle friendly. In the long term, a safe pedestrian bridge over Highway 17 on Stratford Road is in the group's plans.
The ultimate long-range goal though, Barlow said, is the acquisition of the railroad adjacent to Neppel Trail in Neppel Park in order to extend the trail in each direction.
"We'd like to see extending Neppel Trail through the state park and out to Cove West," Rogers said. "Kids could go all the way from Cove West out to McCosh Park and be safe and on a bike trail."
Accessing a safe route for every student in the area to get to school has been another facet for the group. A Safe Routes to School Committee has formed, and looked at ways to ease pedestrian and traffic problems community at schools. Volunteers have recently been successful in one of their grant requests, securing more than $150,000 for a safe route for students at Longview Elementary School along Maple Drive.
TPT member Brenda Teals said the group's successful projects have had many partners.
"There are so many interested groups, and we're all working for the same thing," Rogers added.
Russell stressed a number of the projects the group is working on are primarily part of the group's phase one goal of connecting the community's existing trails. He said the group's overall goal is to connect isolated neighborhood trails.
"A lot of things are actually coming to fruition that we have been talking about for five years," Russell said.
Carpenter said each of the projects become a priority as funds become available, but conceded the group does need manpower and volunteers for projects like grant writing to find funding for many of its proposed trails.
In the long run, Russell said he envisions people walking from throughout Moses Lake to the free concerts in McCosh Park. Instead of getting in a car to get somewhere, he said people will eventually get on their bike or walk.
"If we can get things a little bit safe then the kids will start to walk to school," Russell said.
TPT members concede trails work will never be complete, but right now they have the goal of creating that safe environment so children will walk to school and adults will walk and bike to work. Rogers said when it feels good for people to walk, people will walk.
"Why do people walk in European cities? Because they can," Rogers said. "If you make it nice, people do it. If not, they won't."