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MetroLink and Madison County Trails

I think it's a great thing the people of Madison County are considering expanding MetroLink into their county. I think people see the benefits of MetroLink when they don't have to fight traffic on the Poplar Street and Martin Luther King bridges each morning to get to their jobs in St. Louis.

I don't have a need for MetroLink each day since I live about a mile and a half from my job, but I do use it when I go to St. Louis Cardinals games or go to the airport to catch a flight. I take pride when I'm able to make a trip out of town and not have to drive a car at all! On my recent two-week trip to California, I only had to drive a rental car for a day and a half, when I had to drive to Monterey and San Francisco. For everything else, including Yosemite National Park, I used either light rail, Amtrak, buses or airplanes.

Six potential routes are being considered in Madison County. Five of the six would link Granite City and Edwardsville, while the sixth would like Granite City and Alton. The problem with a MetroLink line in Madison County there is a great deal of distance among the major population centers -- Granite City, Collinsville, Edwardsville-Glen Carbon and Alton-Wood River. MetroLink was much easier to route in St. Clair County since the bulk of the population lives in a corridor between East St. Louis and Shiloh.

The bad news for cyclists is that most of the corridors that would serve Edwardsville probably would gobble up some of the Madison County Transit District's system of great bicycle trails. One corridor would take up most of the Madison County Nature Trail, which links Granite City and the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville campus. Another would take most of the Schoolhouse Trail, which now links Granite City, Collinsville and Maryville. Another would take up the Nickel Plate Trail, which links Glen Carbon and Edwardsville. While I think the Madison County Transit District is committed to providing a great network of cycling trails, I'm sure one of the reasons why the district worked to develop the trails so that it could quickly convert one of them for MetroLink use.

The good news for cyclists, however, is that it could take up to 20 years for MetroLink to get built in Madison County. To read more about the proposed expansion, read an article that appeared today in the Belleville News-Democrat.

Roger 0 comments 3:24 AM