As work to extend the Katy Trail slowly brings the popular hiking and biking corridor closer to Kansas City, there are unfinished issues.
There’s that bridge, for starters. The trail runs where the tracks of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad once ran from St. Louis west to Clinton, Mo. The 225-mile trail crosses the Missouri River once, at Boonville. The state of Missouri declined to buy that bridge and incorporate it in the trail when it had the chance a generation ago. That’s made things messy ever since.
For one thing, the Union Pacific now owns the bridge and has wanted to remove it and float part of it downsteam to build a second bridge – badly needed – over the Osage River. That’s on a busy line that runs through Eastern Jackson County, and that one-bridge crossing of the Osage is a major bottleneck. The state and Katy Trail enthusiasts didn’t want the Boonville bridge moved, however, for a variety of reasons. The UP is now getting its second Osage River bridge, thanks to federal stimulus money announced last week to begin laying the groundwork for high-speed rail service.
Problem solved, right? No, not even close.
The Coast Guard says the bridge, if it’s unused, is a needless navigational hazard and has to go, but the agency hasn’t pushed too hard on that point yet. After all, it’s only been about 25 years.
But the bridge has to stay for another reason, some say. “Rails to trails,” at least in theory, are held in reserve for the railroads. What if someday a national emergency requires laying down track again in those corridors? If the bridge is taken out, there’s no usable corridor, and with no corridor, there’s goes the legal underpinning of the whole enterprise. In theory, the land along the trail reverts to nearby property owners and there is no more Katy Trail.
The most simple solution would have been – might still be – just using the darn bridge for bicyclists. Simple, yes. Inexpensive, no. Still, that would keep the bridge in use, would address the Coast Guard’s concerns and would preserve the legal framework of the trail. And it would get bicyclists off the busy highway bridge they have to use now. That’s a safety issue too.
