The Kalamazoo River Valley Trail could run through downtown as early as next year. That’s according to City Planner Rebekah Kik, who says it’s time to move after 15-plus years of talk about extending the KRVT. The city tested a route over four days last month, with a temporary “pop-up” trail.
Kik spoke with WMUK’s Sehvilla Mann about what the city learned from the experiment. She describes what pop-up trail users had to say.
Rebekah Kik: 'This was the intersection that I had a problem with - Water and Porter.' We didn’t hear that about some of the other intersections. ‘Hey Rebekah, could you think about the wayfinding more at Westnedge to get me over to the Harrison Street connection? Make sure that’s really strong?’ We had one portion of the trail that went next to the KVCC Anna Whitten Hall campus. They said, ‘that’s a bit narrow right now, and had there been a lot of students in the area that might have been really difficult.’
Sehvilla Mann: What were the biggest points that people raised? Was that consistent throughout the surveys?
RK: yes. The crossing at Water and Porter was pretty much consistent on everyone’s survey. And also if I had one-on-one conversations with people they would bring up that crossing as well, that something significant to alert motorists and the pedestrians that are crossing there needs to happen. And intuitively we knew that but just hearing it and – people gave us different suggestions as well. And then the mixing with pedestrians when you got to the North Burdick Mall portion of the trail, that was pretty consistent.
SM: Did you hear anything different from pedestrians as opposed to people on bikes?
RK: We did. There were a few people on the survey who actually just walked the trail as opposed to riding their bike on it and they really – they liked how wide it was, and that it just felt like a leisurely stroll even though they said, ‘Yeah, we know that you’re going to have sidewalks along this whole side, it would be really nice if I was pushing a stroller.’
And we did have a gentleman who used his mobility scooter on the trail as well and he really appreciated it. Because sometimes pedestrians that are on the sidewalk, if he’s coming up behind them, they don’t necessarily notice him, or the sidewalk’s too narrow for him to pass around so using that trail was really nice for him.
SM: Parking has been a persistent sticking point in getting a connection between the east and west sides of the KRVT. So what did you hear from people about those parking spots? I did notice the bags on the meters on Eleanor Street.
RK: We haven’t heard anything negative back from the businesses yet, but we are continuing to reach out to them to talk to them about how the parking – taking away the parking impacted them. So we’re going to convene another meeting very soon to say, ‘Okay, here’s a potential design, if it takes away parking what are the impacts to you?’ But we’re also still trying to work on a design that incorporates having on-street parking stay.
SM: What else is next for this project? I’m sure the people who rode it and enjoyed it are wondering if it’s going to come back permanently.
RK: We are getting together a design review committee right now so that we can put this out for a construction proposal. And then that proposal will go out to specific firms who do this kind of trail work, and then once we choose a design firm we will have more public input and more public meetings about what the actual design looks like. We’ve even talked about doing another design demonstration lane potentially in the fall – October or something – that could incorporate that West Michigan Avenue cycle track that MDOT had brought to us a year ago in the fall.
SM: When you’ve got the design commission together and they’ve approved a plan, when you’ve gotten public input, is the last step there that the city commission approves it?
RK: The city commission will approve it, and then we will be able to start construction and we – right now there’s funding going on right now, fundraising going on right now and we hope to be able to have those construction drawings completed while we’re in our lovely winter months and then start construction on the project in the spring so that it could be open in the fall of 2016.
SM: Rebekah Kik with the city of Kalamazoo, thanks for your time.
RK: Thank you so much, Sehvilla.
