Denton Trails Part 1: Why Trails?
Denton Texas, with its two growing universities and independent culture, has a dedicated core of people who ride bikes that is growing. But trails are not just for bicycles. City Council recently discussed preemptive action to restrict motorized scooter rentals, and there was some discussion about the lack of infrastructure to support them. Like bicycles, scooters are too fast to safely share sidewalks with pedestrians. Our arterial roadways are designed foremost to move cars quickly, and are dangerous and frightening to use with bicycles and scooters. Our pedestrians also lack safe, enjoyable routes to get them to the places they want to walk. Their route must often cross or travel along busy roads which, if they have sidewalks, are typically hot, shadeless routes separated from fast, deadly traffic by only a curb.
This series will lay out the benefits, possible design, economic vitality, and differing types of trails, along with some visionary ideas of what a true multimodal network that includes trails could look like. Please join me as you walk, scoot, or ride through these musings:
Part 1: Why Trails?
Part 2: City Trails Inspiration
Part 3: Recreational Trails Inspiration
Part 4: Five Pillars of Trail Success
Part 5 Concept: Locust / UPRR Trail
Part 6 Concept: Pecan Creek Trail
Part 7 Concept: University Trails
Part 8: 35E Crossing Improvements
Part 9: Concept: Downtown Connectivity
Part 10: Mobility Plan Integration
Part 11: Bond Election — Make your voice heard
What is a trail?
Shared-use trails come in a variety of forms and designs. Rail trails, like our local Northeast Texas Trail (NETT) or our Denton A-Train trail, reuse old railroad right-of-ways or develop alongside an existing railroad within the right-of-way. Trails meant primarily for recreation often have natural crushed stone surfaces. Urban trails connect people of all ages to popular destinations. This last type of trail is typically ten feet wide, allowing safe and natural sharing of the trail among people running, walking, bicycling, or using another micro mobility device.
Benefits
By physically separating high speed vehicular traffic from people walking and biking, these trails are much safer than a typical painted bike lane. Their design reduces the number of road crossings so that it is even safer for walking than sidewalks. But this increase in safety doesn’t just save lives, it also encourages more people to bike and walk.
In a recent Bicycle Opinion Survey in the DFW region, 85% of people said they would feel somewhat or very comfortable riding on a path or trail that is separate from the street. 86% said they would feel comfortable in a wide bicycle lane physically separated from traffic by a curb. Only 9–15% of people said they felt safe riding on roads with two or more lanes in each direction without these safety treatments, and Denton like many DFW cities is carved up by such roads shown in black and red (future). Currently, only our A-train trail and Cooper Creek trail shown in green, and the future Sycamore sidepath shown in purple cross such roads. Delightful crossings and routes are essential to give people a realistic choice to walk or bike to destinations outside their neighborhood instead of feeling like they must drive.
Safe trails enable new individuals to make short trips without a car where they otherwise would have felt too uncomfortable to try. As this happens, fewer cars clog the roads leading to a better experience for all people regardless of their chosen mode of transportation, better air quality from less pollution, and reduced long-term maintenance costs to the city which lowers our tax burden.
But the environmental benefits go beyond pulling cars off the road, eliminating their emissions, and improving our air quality. The people using these trails get healthier. Trails often preserve natural riparian areas, increase our urban tree cover and provide space for natural ecosystems our concrete urbanism so often destroys. They aid 10-minute walk to a park programs by providing linear parks close to residents, but also by creating safe ways for people to walk and bike to larger destination parks.
All of this sounds great, but at what cost? The key is to develop trail systems incrementally as part of a pedestrian and bicycle network which connects people from where they are to where they want to go. Creative use of protected paths on some connecting roadways, reusing existing crossings of large roads, and phasing in amenities can provide a trail network which is economically sustainable. In addition to reduced road maintenance as a result of fewer vehicles miles traveled, they often yield increased land value and business activity near the trail at walkable commercial centers, which lowers the tax burden on residents further.
Why now?
The Mobility Plan update is underway. After three public input meetings, the city is working with a consultant to craft a vision of the infrastructure to help us safely drive, walk, and ride a bike around town. At the same time, Denton Parks Department is updating their master plan, which includes looking at future trails to integrate with the Mobility Plan. The August 11 Friday Staff Report stated:
“Staff is committed to expanding the City’s multiuse trail offerings. Parks and Recreation Director, Gary Packan, stated that multiuse trails are the number one requested item for his department. The upcoming parks and recreation master plan contains an entire section dedicated to multiuse trails.”
A bond election has been called for the November election which includes proposition C: Five million dollars to be used for land acquisition for parks. Discussion amongst council has centered on using this to add “linear parks” or trails and preserve green space which could also be used for trails. Passing this bond proposition would go a long way toward providing the parks department with the resources necessary to preserve key sections of riparian ways and other corridors before the land becomes so expensive and so highly developed that building a shared-use trail system is no longer physically or economically possible.
Stay tuned for the rest of the series where we will delve into these possibilities further. Next up is Part 2: City Trails Inspiration.
