Trails in Urban Settings?
(The Rails to) Trails (concept) in Urban Settings
John Fraim
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From my earliest years, a bike was a symbol of freedom for me. I was able to get a long way away from home on my black Schwinn and I took advantage of this. I rode it down to areas of our town maybe once glanced at quickly thorough a car window. I learned there were so many different neighborhoods in our city and how there were little downtowns in a number of these neighborhoods.
Whether I was growing up in LA or Dayton, Ohio, there was always my bike. I gave riding a bike for a number of years but took it up again later in life. In 2016, we moved to the New Albany part of Columbus from Palm Desert, California. We adopted a black greyhound and I walked her up around Rose Run Park a few blocks from our home. I would often walk in big loops around town sometimes going on the city paths with her. I saw a lot of the town in those years, exploring it with my greyhound.
One year ago today, we had to put our greyhound down. An old racing injury like many greyhounds have that caused the spasm she has had for years. Only this time it was extreme.
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A week or so after the death of our greyhound last year, I went down to the local Trek bike store and bought a Trek Verve 2. A hybrid bike like my others over the years. I was ready and excited to get back into bike riding again.
After riding my Trek around New Albany, exploring every street, I don’t know what to say about what this exploration has meant to me this past year. I’ve never known the streets of a town, the places on them, the special parts of town, the various ponds, the little enclosure on Top of the Pond Road. The route takes one through all parts of New Albany. I’m reminded of those rides I went on just a few months after Disneyland opened in Anaheim. Those rides where you were on a type of rail, going past everything. The Pirates of the Caribbean a good example. Slowly, moving through the landscape of the city of New Albany. (One can easily drive the bike route). A total tour should include the north of 161 parts of New Albany and the developing parts farther out.
I started riding around New Albany last May and have ridden in New Albany for a year over the various parts of the above loop marked in the blue line. I have lived in New Albany for ten years -explored it a little with my dog and walks with my wife – but never really saw it until I took up riding my Trek Verve 2 around the New Albany bike paths and streets.
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Recently, I suggested starting a bike club to the NextDoor Neighbor community and heard from one of the heads of the local New Albany Bike Club. He informed me that there is already a club and sent the link to me. I joined as there was no charge and then looked at all of the rides and materials.
It was not for me. But it was very well organized and I did know there were some serious bike riders in New Albany. My neighbor down the block must have been one of these as he had the full gear and all and told me they went on 40 mile rides in the country east of New Albany. That fit the rides of the club.The club did have different levels that put club members into A, B and C groups.
Downtown New Albany, Ohio / Drone Shot by John Fraim
There was 2004 when I started riding a bike again over the Upper Arlington part of Columbus. Then, the years after I separated and all the different bike rides I took my son and his friends on. I had a four bike rack on the back of my Jeep so bike riding became a social event with my son and his friends. We went out to the Rails to Trails Heritage Trail in Hilliard. A straight 6.1 shot from the old part of Hilliard into Plain City. (Where you can ride over to the Dutchman Restaurant and have a 4,000 calorie meal). I took my son and two friends down to Athens, Ohio around 2008 and we all road the Rails to Trials bikeway north towards Nelsonville. It was a warm day but we were shaded by the thick overgrowth that made for a beautiful sight.
In the summer of 2009 when I put my bike on the back of my Jeep explored Ohio’s Rails to Trails. It was the best experience I’ve ever had with a bike. One of the best experiences I’ve ever had. It reminded me so much of that feeling of freedom I felt when first riding a bike in my youth. That first bike.
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Creating a route in New Albany to ride was a challenge and a success. I rode parts of the route every other day through the last of the mild winter and the spring of this year with my orange parka on and my gloves on some days and others in little more than a t-shirt.
I could feel my endurance and strength increase much more than the workouts I had been doing at the Heit Center gym in New Albany. It was good to get my fitness back and my oxygen levels, or what bike riders call the VO level. It was good to drop that weight that I couldn’t drop at the gym.
Spring in Ohio this year has brought sudden surprises with the weather. It can be sunny one minute and then cloudy the next. It’s been like that a lot but we’ve also had some beautiful clear days and I got out on the bike route and took photos with my GoPro 11 on my Trek. Photos along the routes.
Downtown New Albany / Photo by John Fraim
Creating the bike route within the city has been an insightful project. Truth be told, I think I was trying to create the type of route I discovered in riding Rails to Trails in Ohio in 2009. And now, perhaps my large map of the Bike Route in New Albany is simply trying to duplicate a rail to trail bikeway within/close to an urban setting.
Trying to duplicate it within an urban environment. The map above is my best attempt.
I joined the Rails to Trails Conservatory six months ago. I’ve read through all their materials and watched all the videos and read all the links on their site. I think one of the most worthy of all causes today and one paid far less attention to than it warrants. So close to the ideas of John Muir and the Sierra Club it seems to me. The founders words are powerful.
If anything, I want my city to at least explore the founder and mission of Rails to Trail and see if a type of revisioned Rails to Trails might be created in the country east of near New Albany.
I’ve included links below. I encourage bikers to explore our nearest Rails to Trail bikeway: the Evans Trail in Johnstown. Or, Hilliard’s Heritage Trail.
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My dream is that New Albany would create a revisioned. modern version of the Rail to Trails concept. I encourage all to read the mission of Rails to Trails and see how more important this idea and philosophy is at this time, more than ever.
With Intel and all the new employers in the eastern part of New Albany, the modern Silicon Valley, a new type of wide bikeway should at least be explored. Biking might become a means of transportation between the various companies in the exploding business park. There was economic reason to salvage old RR bed for bikeways. But has anyone associated with RTT considered the creation of modern RTTs for the changing citizen? Millions American citizens are from cultures and countries where riding a bike is much more common and accepted than in America.
The modern Rail to Trail might be various tours one can take on a bike. I recall riding my bike along the bikeway starting at the Santa Monica Pier and going south to the airport. Or it might be the amazing bike trail around Mackinaw Island. The place where bikes rule.
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Rather than find abandoned rail sites, what about reclaiming part of farmland, compensating farmers and creating perhaps a straight away run like Hilliard. It can be curved of course. The challenge is not to convert old RR track beds but to create a contemporary version of Rails to Trails. Placing the idea and concept of Rails to Trails in an urban environment. There are a number of ways that offer government assistance according to the materials I read on their website.
A city with a large, growing business park as part of a town might consider new bike paths between buildings in the business park. Offering a new way of communicating within a growing business park. New ways of transportation within a business park community. Attached up to a longer bike trail so that one could get a good workout.
Corporations giving bonuses to employees bases on the odometer readings of their bikes and and of the numerous bike competitions between corporations that could be carried out on a New Albany Rails to Tails. The first concept of a trail within an urban setting. And, putting oneself on a bike in this setting.
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Giving employees access to the incredible physical fitness possible to employees having access to a bike path. All given bikes to their own fit that have bike computers on them measuring a number of things.
The physical fitness it almost a given. Especially if there are bonuses (which there should be) tied to certain figures on the bike meters. Among other factors. But not just physical fitness or weight loss is the most important benefit of bikes in our modern era of fitness. They have the potential to create a mass fitness and the transfer of a positive chemical into the brain. A mental fitness.
I’ve hiked in Yosemite and Big Sur in the 70s through the 90s while living in California. There is nothing like the feeling when you’ve pushed yourself to the physical limit in some way. You have had to experienced this feeling to really know what I’m talking about.
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The idea has implications far beyond New Albany it seems to me.
Read over the literature of Rails to Trails below.
Worth contemplating.
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Information on Rails to Trails