City’s main recreation paths will be linked

It’s taken a while, but it looks like the city will finally complete the link between its two main alternative transportation paths: The Chattahoochee RiverWalk and the Fall Line Trace.

On Tuesday, Columbus Council unanimously agreed to authorize a preliminary project approval for the link and to commit $2.4 million in Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax funds to the project.

The connection, which will feature 12-foot-wide concrete paths separate from vehicular traffic, will pick up where the Fall Line Trace now ends, on 10th Avenue near the Medical Center. It will cross 10^th with a traffic signal, then go south parallel to 10^th on an old rail bed. It will turn west on Linwood Boulevard and continue down to Fifth Avenue. It will stretch south on a path parallel to Fifth to 14^th Street. There, it will turn west again and, with traffic signals at intersections, take users down to the RiverWalk at the Frank Martin Pedestrian Bridge.

Plans also call for another connection to the RiverWalk. It would take users down Sixth Avenue from the Linwood Boulevard to Ninth Street, then west to the RiverWalk at the Trade Center. That link would also turn east at Ninth Street and connect with a planned trail that would run the length of Martin Luther King Boulevard and include a linear park and museum devoted to King. In turn, that trail would also connect to another trail at its western end, which would take users northeast to Lakebottom Park and beyond to ultimately reconnect to the Fall Line Tract near Hilton Avenue.

When the city built the Fall Line Trace, it was originally meant to be linked to the RiverWalk, but the connection was put on the back burner at some point, Councilor Glenn Davis pointed out Tuesday.

“Today we have an opportunity to finish it and connect it to the RiverWalk,” Davis said. “To me, we’re completing the Fall Line Trace, and I think that’s a good thing for the citizens.”

And there are other multi-use paths planned, but not in the works.

In all, there are plans for building 27.5 miles of trails in 12 “links” that would create a large loop linking north and south Columbus and create cross-paths linking different areas.

The project is a public-private partnership with the PATH Foundation, an Atlanta-based non-profit.

This story was originally published June 23, 2016 at 3:12 PM with the headline "City’s main recreation paths will be linked."