The District 3 Office for the Missouri Department of Transportation, which includes Warren County, will seek letters of support from Washington for a grant application for a bike/pedestrian trail leading from the Washington bridge north along Highway 47 to Dutzow.
The trail would connect to the Katy Trail at Dutzow.
Darren Lamb, community and economic development director, and Dan Boyce, city engineer, discussed the trail during a bridge committee meeting Tuesday morning, Sept. 18.
Statewide, there was an additional $6 million for enhancement projects for areas outside the major metropolitan areas, Lamb said. The funds are separate from the East-West Gateway funds, which are already secured.
Franklin County is not eligible for those funds, but Warren County, which is a part of the Boonslick Regional Planning Commission, is eligible to apply.
A total of $1.45 million in grant funds for the current funding cycle is available to the Northeast District, which includes Lincoln, Montgomery and Warren counties.
Erik Maninga, MoDOT area engineer with District 3, applied for grant funds last year, but was denied. MoDOT will resubmit an application this year. Applications are due the first week of November and grant selections will be announced Jan. 7, 2013.
The 10-foot-wide trail would be separate from Highway 47, but would run parallel with it and run to Dutzow, Boyce said.
The cost estimate of the trail is $500,000, Boyce said.
“I know it’s a need for the area,” Maninga said. “With the new Washington bridge coming in and it having a bike pathway, we need to make some sort of connection to the trail.”
In the next several weeks, Maninga will visit various city boards in Washington to ask for letters of support for the project.
“Anytime you’ve got multi-jurisdiction support, it helps,” Lamb said, adding that Washington has long had a goal to connect to the Katy Trail.
“I think this will be really helpful for that connection,” he said. “When the bridge is able to be funded and constructed, we will make accommodations for all types of transportation to cross the bridge, and this will be an important link to make the connection to the Katy Trail,”
Boyce agreed, adding that applications carry weight if there is support from other entities.
“(This is) all in the spirit of trying to enhance the application and show there’s a lot of regional support for it,” he said.
The project would require a 20 percent cost-share contribution from the Northeast District, which would be $100,000.
MoDOT has not asked for financial support, however, Boyce said the city may consider a financial contribution to help make the application stronger.
Boyce stressed that no decisions have been made on financial contributions.
