Thursday, September 15, 2005
By Guy Tridgell
Staff writer
The inaugural Southland-Calumet Healthy Streets and Trails Workshop will take place Friday and Saturday at the village's Eisenhower Fitness and Community Center, 2550 178th St.
Touted as a summit to teach and inspire south suburban municipal leaders to embrace all things bicycling, the workshop is a first for the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation.
Steve Buchtel, a Homewood resident and the federation's Southland coordinator, said similar conferences were held in Chicago with moderate success at attracting a suburban crowd.
"We have discovered communities outside of Chicago do not necessarily like going into Chicago to have someone tell them what they need to do," Buchtel said. "The bottom line is we need communities to learn about this stuff."
Sessions scheduled over the two days will present information about tapping into grant money to build trails and incorporating bicycles to cut down on congestion near schools. Another topic will address luring bicyclists to shopping areas and downtowns.
An Indianapolis official will give a presentation on how bike trails revitalized neighborhoods in his city.
Buchtel said local governments are starting to understand that trails can be tools for economic development.
"If you get more people walking or on bicycles, they are not going to go 30 miles to shop," Buchtel said. "Trails rank second to schools when people look at important reasons to move into a neighborhood."
The conference will be capped by a 25-mile ride on local trails.
Lansing was picked as the site of the workshop because the Lan-Oak Park District is breaking ground Saturday on the Pennsy Greenway, a trail made from the remnants of an abandoned railroad.
District director John Wilson said the first three miles of trail will take people through downtown Lansing, home to a new band shell and memorial garden.
"People will have a safe place to walk, bike and skateboard," Wilson said. "It will be some country in the city. It is pretty inexpensive recreation."
The trail eventually will become a link between the Mississippi River and Lake Michigan, Wilson said.
For more information about the Healthy Streets & Trails Workshop, go to www.biketraffic.org/workshop. Registration is $40.
Transportation writer Guy Tridgell may be reached at [email protected] or (708) 633-5970.