----- Forwarded Message ----
From: John Keates <Johnk@...>
Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2007 9:34:38 PM
Subject: Trails Article

Soon the trails could be oneMIKE ARCHBOLD; The News Tribune Published:
December 15th, 2007 01:00 AM

Sumner Mayor Dave Enslow showed off new ramps and decking that have
turned a utility bridge over the White River into part of a paved bike
trail in the city’s north industrial area.
The sign on the bridge tells the unfinished trail story: DEAD END.

The 0.14 miles of trail north and south of the bridge begin nowhere and
end nowhere. The trail doesn’t connect to any other – yet.

“One day I’m going to tear that sign down,” Enslow promised this week.

How long will it take? The mayor said he was an optimist. “I like 2010,”
he said.

There is reason to buy into his positive outlook.

Sumner and Pacific want people to pedal through their communities. And
they now have a network representing 250,000 people in nine cities lined
up behind them.

The connection between the 16-mile Foothills Trail in Pierce County and
the 14.7-mile Interurban Trail in King County is already tantalizingly
close. What remains unfilled is a 2-mile, $10 million gap between Sumner
and the nearby city of Pacific.

It’s time to plug that gap, says the Valley Cities, a coalition of
mayors from nine communities along the route.

“You feel like you gotta do it,” said Auburn Mayor Pete Lewis, one of
the coalition members.

The others are mayors from Tukwila, Renton, Kent, Algona and Pacific in
King County and Sumner, Puyallup and Fife in Pierce County.

Lewis said the confluence of trails will create a regional benefit that
conjures memories of the transcontinental railways, which put Pierce and
South King counties on the map a century ago.

“In a really, really minor way, it’s the driving of the spike when you
connect those two trail systems,” he said. “This is connectivity on so
many levels. This is about the environment, health and economic
development reaching across a region.”

Linking a 31-mile-long span crossing two counties sounds good to Damian
Lee of Tacoma. He drives to the end of the Interurban Trail in Pacific
three times a week for a 40-mile bicycle ride.

The idea of jumping on the Foothills Trail or starting on Puyallup’s
Riverwalk Trail is inviting.

“That would be cool,” he said at the end of a recent ride. “I wouldn’t
have to drive as far.”

Many polls have indicated that Puget Sound-area residents are past the
point of debating whether trails are worth the money, Mayor Lewis said.

But building them is not cheap, and it usually happens in pieces.

As Sumner City Administrator John Doan put it: “You do the easiest
pieces first.”

The Sumner-Pacific gap is significant.

A rusted sign from the late 1970s at the end of the 14.7-mile Interurban
Trail at Third Avenue in Pacific optimistically points east and west.
But the paved trail that starts in Tukwila and follows the historic
Interurban Rail Line ends there.

Going any farther south into Sumner and beyond requires following narrow
surface streets busy with truck traffic that serves warehouses in the
area.

Though the streets are usable, they can be downright dangerous, even for
longtime bicyclists. It’s certainly no place for families with children.

Josh Putnam, 40, has been bicycling since he was a kid and lives in a
house at the end of the Interurban Trail in Pacific. Getting on the
trail is as easy as crossing his grass.

A few years ago when he went looking for a house for his family, the key
requirement was that it be on a bike trail. He is among a number of
Puget Sound-area residents who put bicycle and walking trails at the top
of their list of community and neighborhood assets.

“Right now I look outside my window and see three cars still parked (at
the trailhead)” he said. “They are winter commuters.”

Weekends, he said, bring Pierce County residents who park and ride
north.

Elected to the Pacific City Council in November, Putnam said that
completing the trail south into Sumner will be high on his priority
list.

The good neway. All of the trail segments are in some stage of development, from
negotiations to land purchase to paving. Issues over wetlands must be
overcome in some spots.

In Pierce County, the Foothills Trail ends south of Sumner, but the City
of Puyallup is planning in 2008 to complete the last section of its
Riverwalk Trail connecting both to Sumner and to the Foothills trail.

The challenge facing Pierce County and Tacoma is to extend the Riverwalk
Trail west to Ruston Way.

Together, the Riverwalk, Foothills and Interurban trails comprise what
the Valley Cities group is calling the Tri-Trail.

Like Pacific, Sumner has been doing its part by designing or completing
small sections of the trail each year since 1999.

Money, not imagination, is the main obstacle, said Doan, the Sumner
administrator.

Sumner has completed three sections of the extended Foothills Trail
through the city along the White River. The City Council has budgeted
more than $600,000 in city funds and hoped-for grants for trail
construction.

One daunting gap is a bridge across the White River on Stewart Avenue,
which is being widened to five lanes as an east-west connector from the
Lakeland Hills subdivision across the valley floor to Highway 167 in
Pacific. The bridge is only two lanes and needs to be enlarged, or else
a second bridge added with a trail.

The estimated cost for the bridge alone is $4 million.

The Valley Cities aid to Sumner and Pacific won’t come in the form of
cash. Lewis said the group is talking about helping by leveraging its
regional clout.

An interlocal agreement to work cooperatively on linking the trails is
circulating among the cities. Forever Green, a Pierce County trail
advocacy group, is also included in the agreement.

That means when Sumner (population 9,034) or Pacific (population 5,964)
applies for state or federal trail money, they would have lots more
support behind them.

Pacific Mayor Richard Hildreth said Valley Cities has allowed creation
of a unified plan, “not just bits and pieces. … We now have everyone
working on the same page.”

Mike Archbold: 253-597-8692

mike.archbold@...