Bids will be opened Oct. 4 for extension of the Prairie Spirit Trail from Cofachique Park to Benton Street at the northeast corner of Riverside Park.
Engineers estimated cost of the asphalt trail, 10 feet wide and covering about a mile, at $460,000. The Kansas Department of Transportation will pay 80 percent, the city the remainder. If the estimate is realized in the successful bid, Iola’s share will be $92,000. The city will spend another $29,000 to erect lights along the trail.
While contract documents call for construction to take 90 days, weather may have a role, said Cory Schinstock, assistance city administrator. Asphalt can not be laid if the weather is too cold.
The new portion of the trail may not be the end of its southward expansion.
City officials eventually would like to take the trail on to the south city limit, which would have it run all along the east side of Riverside Park, Schinstock noted.
Recreation and exercise activists in Humboldt also would like for the trail to cover the intervening rail bed between Iola and Humboldt. If that were to occur, the trail would dead-head at Humboldt, where rail service remains active on to the south.
The Iola-to-Humboldt trail, covering six miles, is a project that has piqued the interest of Thrive Allen County, said David Toland, its executive director.
“We’re going to work on it,” Toland said.
IN ADDITION to the trail’s surfacing, a grant from KDOT will pay for installation of a signal where the trail now crosses North State Street, one block north of Garfield Street.
The electronic signal, which will extend over State Street, will have three lights, two yellow and one red that will be activated by trail users. When someone pushes the button the two yellow lights will flash to draw attention of motorists, and turn solid yellow before the red light, to stop traffic, comes on.
Schinstock said the trail’s crossing of U.S. 54 would not include an electronic traffic signal.
“Our engineers (Schwab-Easton, Manhattan) did studies at both places and found that traffic was heavier and faster on North State Street than on (U.S.) 54,” just before it leaves Iola, Schinstock said.
Trail walkers will be encouraged to use the levee around Riverside Park, both as an exercise adjunct and for access to restrooms and other facilities in the park.
“The Corps of Engineers recently certified the levees and reminded us that the fence on the (north) levee should be moved,” Schinstock said. Because the fence belongs to USD 257, “we’ll be talking to (Superintendent of Schools Brian) Pekarek about moving the fence.”
Removal of the fence would make it easier to maintain a pathway along the top of the levee that circles the park.
City officials have talked about making a path atop the levee of crushed rock, although “grass probably would be just as good,” Schinstock said.
Trail users would have little trouble leaving the levee on its grassy slope and those who prefer a stairway would find three, two on the west side and one of the south.
The levee was constructed in the late 1930s in a Works Progress Administration program. The WPA began in 1935, at the height of the Great Depression, and over the next eight years $13.4 billion were spent throughout the nation to improve communities’ infrastructure and put people to work.
