Reply to Rock Island Updates

Any good updates on the Rock Island Trail? Seems kind of quiet.

kctv 5 had a news story of a confermed trail cam footage of a black bear near pleasant hill mo they showed the rock island trail.

I would hope that all bike riders would bouycott anything from farm bureau.

The good news about the Rock Island Trail is mostly around Kansas City: funds have been approved reduce the 8 mile "Greenwood Gap" to about a 4 mile gap. Jackson County is trying to buy right of way at the north end of the gap and that should fill in about 3 miles to near 150 Hwy. in Greenwood and Pleasant Hill will be extending their MoPAC trail section about 1 mile north to Pleasant Hill Lake. I would expect another 2 1/2 years for those new trail sections to be open for riders.

Another recent announcement involves a new bike/ped bridge in Pleasant Hill that will allow riders to go over the other active railroad tracks in town instead of having to ride the 1/2 mile on the highway shoulder in town. That will be a significant bridge to design and build, and that project is funded by the Ted and Pat Jones Foundation (the same family that funded the development of the Katy Trail many decades ago).

The bad news about the cross-state section of the Rock Island Trail involves members of the Missouri Senate not wanting to spend any state funds on new state park infrastructure while existing state parks are under-funded and need significant maintenance already. There are significant politics involved, but the disagreements are complicated enough that Missouri actually rejected and gave back $2.7 million in federal funds that could only be used for the Rock Island Trail.

Check out this link if you want to learn more about the politics behind the cross-state section of the Rock Island Trail: https://mobikefed.org/2023/05/rock-island-trail-what-happened-jefferson-city-legislative-session

Currently it looks like only short segments of the Rock Island Trail inside rural town city limits will be allowed to be developed as a trail over the next couple of years (Owensville, Belle, Eldon, and Versailles have funding for these short in town segments).

The politics are bad enough right now, that this restrictive statement was actually written into the state budget this year: "No funds shall be used for the maintenance, rehabilitation, restoration, and repair of the Missouri Rock Island Trail Corridor that runs from Windsor to Beaufort, Missouri on private land in which the trail runs through or outside of any city, town, or village limits".