Tag Archives: Amarillo parks department

environmental news, local news, State news

Biking gets a big boost

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Let’s get real. Texans love their cars, trucks and just about any vehicleĀ that burns fossil fuels.

We pull a lot of fossil fuel out of the ground here. The Spindletop oil gusher in 1901 brought usĀ the Texas oil boom and it has continued ever since, with all of its ups and downs.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Heck, our 21-plus years in West Texas have given us a keen appreciation of how much distance one must travel . . . to get anywhere. It almost always involves a motor vehicle.

So it is with that I noticed this story — yes, it’s a bit dated, having been reported initially in the fall of 2014 — about a proposal to build a 64-mile bicycle trail between Dallas and Fort Worth.

KERA-TVĀ reported more than a year agoĀ that a study of Dallas residents reveals a significant portion of folks would support greater emphasis on bicycle trails in their city.

It’s being called a “superhighway.” It marks a remarkable departure from the love affair Metroplex residents have had with their motor vehicles.

So now comes the question from me, a resident of another community in the midst of some serious urban living change.

Is such an emphasis possible here, in Amarillo?

It’s a creative notion to connect two cities the size of Dallas and Fort Worth with a bicycle trail network.

It prompted this thought: Is such a network possible that would connect Amarillo with Canyon?

Amarillo’s downtown district revival already has begun. They’ve busted up plenty of pavement and begun erecting some structures in the central business district. More construction is on the way.

I am wondering, though, about the city’s effort to connect neighborhoods with bike trails. That project began about a decade ago. Then it stopped. Indeed, we have bike lanes marked off in my neighborhood, which is great. Except that they don’t go anywhere.

I have been told that the city Parks and Recreation Department plans to finish the bike trail network — eventually.

The reality is that the weather here is conducive to that kind of activity. The unseasonably warm winter we’re having is an aberration. Spring can be a bit dicey; summer isn’t oppressively hot; autumn is the most pleasant season of all.

The Metroplex bicycle “superhighway” is still a couple of years away, according to KERA. I do applaud the innovation that’s gone into planning for it.

Might there be a potential for something like that here, way up yonder?

 

local news

Amarillo has a project worth emulating

DODGE CITY, Kan. — The people who run the city where I’ve lived for the past 20 years have taken plenty of hits of late.

Some of it is deserved. Some of it is not.

But as my wife and I have visited Dodge City for the past few days, we’ve noticed a project thatĀ could do some good here. It reminds us of a project that’s been done in Amarillo.

Rails to Trails in Amarillo was developed some years ago by converting an abandoned railroad right-of-way into a hiking and biking park complex.

We’ve discovered an abandoned rail line in Dodge City, just a few hundred yards from the RV park where we’ve stayed. It looks for all the world like the Rails to Trails park used to look as it coursed through Amarillo for slightly less than 4 miles.

Grass has overgrown the railroad ties and the rails themselves. Indeed, the neighborhood surrounding the Dodge City rail line looks a lot like the San Jacinto neighborhood that borders much of what once was a crappy old rail line running through Amarillo.

Rails to Trails remains a work in progress.Ā I visited recently with the city parks department administrator about plans to finish a long-standing project connecting neighborhoods with hiking and biking paths; Rails to Trails is part of the unfinished work.

The park, though, gives the neighborhood along its route a much better look than it had before it was developed — and for that the city deserves high praise.

Dodge City isn’t nearly the size of Amarillo, but it has precisely the same kind of potential staring it down.

It runs along an old rail line that ought to be turned into park.