The B2B Trail – Concept to Completion Series

Two of the most common questions that we receive are: “How is the trail being built?” and “When is the trail (or specific trail segment) going to be finished?” As loyal supporters and users of the B2B Trail, we want to take you on a behind-the-scenes journey of what is involved in taking a trail from concept to completion.

In our upcoming newsletters, we will be running a series of articles covering the major steps necessary to bring a trail into reality – including a deep-dive into trail planning, funding, engineering, and ultimately construction.

A major theme that you will see throughout this series is that non-motorized trail development is all about partnership. Indeed, even these articles will be written by a collaboration of the Huron Waterloo Pathways Initiative (HWPI) – the main private funding entity and information hub of the B2B Trail – and the Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission (WCPARC) team – the primary design and construction agency behind the B2B Trail – to bring you a comprehensive perspective on all aspects of the work.

Partnership is critical for a host of reasons, most fundamentally because no single entity owns all of the land needed to build the trail, requiring close collaboration amongst project partners from the outset of any project. Even once built, no one agency or organization owns all of the completed trail. WCPARC owns more of the B2B Trail than any other public entity, but ownership constantly switches as the trail travels through parks, cities, townships, campuses, and Rights of Way throughout Washtenaw County.

As one recent example – the multi-year effort to connect all three Huron-Clinton Metroparks in Washtenaw County  – Delhi, Dexter Huron, and Hudson Mills – involved six landowners and three maintenance entities. Fortunately, most project partners are willing to work together, sometimes outside of their primary focus, because they see the value that the trail brings to our community.

When it comes to trail funding, the primary public-private partnership exists between HWPI and WCPARC. Prior to HWPI’s creation, WCPARC was the primary funder of the B2B Trail, relying on highly competitive public grant opportunities to supplement local  millage dollars that allowed them to complete an average of one mile of new trail per year. Since HWPI and WCPARC formally teamed up in 2017, more than $12 million of private funding has been raised to support the B2B Trail, while nearly doubling the overall scope of the planned B2B Trail distance and increasing the average construction rate to over three miles per year.

Private dollars raised by HWPI have come in a mix of foundation grants and individual donors, including an incredible $4.32 million in grant funding from The Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation and millions of dollars of private funding from over 2,600 individuals like you.

How is such a rapid increase in the rate of construction possible? Private funding can be strategically used to fill funding gaps and advance projects outside of long-range grant funding cycles and often accounts for one third  of a project’s budget. When combined with traditional public funding sources, private dollars allow for much faster trail development than one of those funding sources on its own, making the HWPI and WCPARC partnership one of the most important to finishing the B2B Trail in the near future.

Through our upcoming series of articles, we hope to show you how the B2B Trail is being constructed, and how your support and engagement with HWPI plays a critical role in the project. As you will discover, nothing is simple or straightforward about trail development and construction, but with strong community support, good public partners, and a collaborative approach, we can work together to make our community healthier and more connected.

A TRAVEL THROUGH TIME: Riverside Park

by Janice Anschuetz (2016) ~~~~~

If a city has a heart, then Ypsilanti Michigan’s heart must be Riverside Park.  Nearly everyone in Ypsilanti and beyond can share a wonderful memory of an event in the park, whether it is of the 150,000 people from far and wide who participate in the Color Run, those that imbibe in their favorite brews at the Michigan Beer Festival, the thousands who come from all over the nation to the annual Elvis Fest, families that enjoy a Memorial Day weekend concert by the river, car fanatics that attend the many auto shows, those that enjoy meeting friends and family at the Heritage Festival, or the many locals who enjoy their time merely walking the lovely trail by the river in all seasons. Going further back in time you may remember going to the winter Festival of Lights show complete with horse & carriage rides, or having your heart stopped as the Wallenda family replicated the dangerous seven-man pyramid in Riverside Park decades after their family’s tragic accident in Detroit.

2016 is a special year for Ypsilanti’s Riverside Park, located on the Huron River between Michigan Avenue and Cross Street. The recently-installed Heritage Bridge allows those with wheelchairs, strollers, and bicycles – as well as pedestrians – a Michigan Avenue entrance to the park.  This is a dream come true after more than 100 years of waiting. The Olmsted Brothers (the landscape firm responsible for plans for Belle Isle, New York’s Central Park, and many other public parks and private gardens) suggested in their 1913 plan for Ypsilanti that the city acquire all of the land adjacent to the river, and even provided an illustration of what is now Riverside Park connecting to Michigan Avenue by way of a bridge.  The Heritage Bridge also provides a gateway to the new Border to Border Trail which continues south of Michigan Avenue and becomes a new linear park that connects with Water Works Park, North Bay Park, and Blue Heron Park, and eventually all of the way to the Wayne County line.

Like me, you may have wondered how this beautiful park came about and I would like to share what I have learned of its history. Pretend that you are pausing with me for a moment on the new Heritage Bridge, crossing the Huron River at Michigan Avenue and look back to the charming vista of what is now Riverside Park. Then let us imagine that we can go back in time over two hundred years.  What we would see then?  High on the northwest bank of the river would be an Indian trading post owned by three Frenchman:  Gabriel Godfroy, Fancois Pepin, and Romaine La Chambre which was called “Godfroy’s on the Pottawatomie Trail.”  This trading post was built where the Saulk trail (now Michigan Avenue) and Pottawatomie trail (which ran along the Huron River) converged.  The post was in a good location as the last trading post before entering the large settlement of Detroit, and the first trading post after leaving that location.

Most likely the trading post would have been a rough hewn square log structure.  Perhaps some customers would be lounging in front or camped by the shore of the river.  The three major tribes using both the trails and the river for transportation were the Ottawa (Odawa), the Ojibwa (Chippewa), and the Pottawatomie who had formed an alliance know as the Three Fires.  The Wendat (Wyandotte) Indians also traveled through the area.  The Huron River is said to have been named by the French who thought that the Wyandotte Indian hair style of shaved sides and stiff hair in the middle reminded them of the spine of a wild boar – which they called “huare” and which eventually was anglicized as “Huron,” according to Charles Chapman’s History of Washtenaw County, Michigan published in 1881.

Like other trading posts of the time, we can imagine that Indians, trappers and hunters could exchange the fur of beaver, deer, bear, fox, wildcat, wolf, otter and muskrat for powder, shot, muskets, cast iron cooking pots, axes, knives, beads, silver breast plates, bracelets, and other items.

We learn more about Colonel Gabiel Godfroy in The Story of Ypsilanti written by Harvey C. Colburn, published in 1923, and now available for sale in re-print at the Ypsilanti Historical Museum Archives.  Godfrey was a man of influence and ambition as well as some wealth.  Like his partners, Pepin and La Chambre, he was not a friend of the British and supported the Americans in the war for independence.  He was 51 years old when he established the trading post in 1809 and, like his partners, was firmly established in Detroit where he held office as an assessor, operated a ferry across the Detroit River to Canada, and owned a milling business.  It seems that he continued to live in Detroit while he owned the trading post, and he also owned 68 acres of land in Detroit and another 200 acres in Dearborn.  Along with his son in law, James McCloskey, he served on the Detroit Board of Selectmen, on which there were only five members.  We know that in 1814 Godfroy was one of the trustees of historic St. Anne’s Parish (the 2^nd oldest continuous Catholic Church parish in the nation still in existence) and that by 1815 he also owned a tannery in Detroit.  His commission of Colonel is from the First Michigan Regiment.

His partners, Pepin and LaChambre have also left their mark on history by supporting the Americans instead of the British.  In fact, at one time, a British officer, Colonel Burke, wrote a letter to the Pottawatomies in an effort to turn them against the Americans, and the letter fell into Pepin’s hands.  Pepin made sure that the message was delivered after he added this postscript: “My Comrades:  You know that I have always spoken to you as a brother and this time I am incapable of lying to you.  He who writes this (Burke) is neither a Frenchman nor a priest, but a rascal who has been chosen by the English to deceive you.”

The trading post did not last long.  It burned and was rebuilt once but the treaties of Detroit and Saginaw removed the Indians from the area.  In the year 1811, these three ambitious men took advantage of the new opportunities for land ownership in what would become Ypsilanti, and purchased large tracts of land in the area known as “French Claims”.  The claims began at the river and then followed the line of what is now Forest Avenue southwest for about two miles and then the line turned southeasterly for two miles again where it intersected with the river.  This area composed about two square miles, or around 2,500 acres, and the river became the eastern boundary. The deeds were signed by President Madison along with the three Frenchmen who partnered in the trading post. Two of Godfroy’s children also shared in the ownership.

By 1823, the river, and the water power it offered, was quickly bought up by nineteenth century industrialists such as Norris, Harwood, Hardy and Reading, who all built dams for harvesting the river power.  When the railroad was built in Ypsilanti in 1838, stockyards holding sheep, pigs and cattle lined the river bank.  Far from the clear waters we see today and could imagine when the trading post flourished, looking down from Heritage Bridge we would have seen waste – both human and animal – and garbage of all descriptions – flowing in the river, certainly no place for a tranquil park.

The Godfroy family sold their land on the river to some of the wealthy industrialists who had taken advantage of the river power, before the age of electricity.  Soon elegant and picturesque mansions lined the high banks of the Huron River, many with ornate terraced gardens which lined the sides of the cliff.  Because the river often flooded, the lower part of their property could not be built on, and without stable banks would be considered boggy and marshy – what today we know as wetlands and were then called “flats.”

It could be that the first recreational use of this land occurred in 1886 when the Ypsilanti Toboggan Slide Company was formed by four young men.  A 200-foot wooden slide was constructed starting at the second story window of an existing barn on Huron Street (about where Riverside Arts Center now exists) and in trestle like fashion with a drop of 50 feet.  The wooden structure was packed firm with ice from the river.  Thrill seeking Victorians could provide their own sleds or rent one for a modest fee.  It seems that this was a spectator sport as much as one for participation, as an audience could watch women and girls in long dresses and men and boys screaming past them as they made the chilling descent from a second story window high above the river.  

By 1892 the city formed an official Ypsilanti park system when a group of women determined to transform public land into a park where a cemetery existed at Cross and Prospect Street.  The original bodies had already been moved to Highland Cemetery.  The land was soon transformed into a pleasant place to walk with flowered paths and even a pond and fountain known as Luna Lake.  Visitors were said to arrive by train from Detroit and Ann Arbor to enjoy this tranquil space.

The following account could have been the inspiration of the beginning of a park on the river.  About 1908 the Quirk family donated their large Victorian mansion to the city of Ypsilanti for use as a town hall, replacing the small town hall/jail located on the north east side of Cross and Huron Streets.  Not only were the residents of Ypsilanti given a stately building, but it came complete with terraced gardens and riverside land.  A “Landscape Design for Development for Quirk Park” was done by the Monroe, Michigan firm of J. Joseph Poleo and shows a meandering series of garden paths between the mansion on the bluff and the river.  Harvey C. Colburn indicated in his book, The Story of Ypsilanti, that the flats behind the city hall were used for “pageants” and athletic events for the nearby high school.  The rest of the area, which is now Riverside Park, was held in private hands with the “ribbon lots”, extending in the French way from Huron Street to the river.

In 1913, the Olmsted Brothers were commissioned by the small town of Ypsilanti, whose population was then about 6000, to give advice on how to help the town grow in such a way as to not only attract business and industry, but to provide a healthy living environment for its citizens.  As far as the Huron River was concerned, the Olmsted Brothers were frank in their criticism of its neglected and defiled state saying in their report: “The Huron River with its large natural reservoirs and its steep channel, was long ago claimed for economic uses, by water power development in a small unsystematic way.  Many mills were built but most of them have since fallen into disuse and decay, and the river is now largely in a picturesque state of neglect.  Its shores now overgrown in many places, pools and rapids break into monotomy (sic), while railways and public roads cross and recross it in many places.”

The report went on to chastise the city for neglecting the riverfront, which at that time was often used as a garbage dump with raw sewage, waste products, and chemicals flowing into it daily.  The report continued: “The river, with its many advantages as a naturally beautiful feature of the city, is now almost wholly ignored, or worse, it is defiled and treated as a menace to adjacent property.”  The Olmsted Brothers suggested that the flood plain between Michigan Avenue and Cross Street, unsuitable for building, could be used as a public park. The firm also provided a drawing of a string of parks throughout the city on the Huron River, which included what would become Frog Island and Riverside Park.  In a more detailed drawing of Riverside Park there is an access bridge from Michigan Avenue in the vicinity of where the 2015 Heritage Bridge is newly located!

Perhaps with the need for employment during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the possibility of municipal projects funded by the Federal Works Progress Administration, Olmstead’s ideas began to take shape.  During this time, the city was able to collect the deeds to the many parcels of land that now make up the 14 acres of what we now know as Riverside Park.  Some were purchased and some were donated.  We read in an Ypsilanti Press article in 1932 that the Detroit Edison Company not only donated the hill and land to the river behind their property, but paid for the land to be landscaped to conform to the adjacent slope and land of the park. The city purchased the old Greek Revival home at 126 North Huron Street and demolished it in order to provide an entrance to the park between St. Luke’s Church and the Ladies Library.  We read descriptions of this entrance to the park, which sound charming, involved rock gardens along the slope on the way to the park, and remnants of them can still be seen.

With a polluted river running through it and the river bank still being used for trash and garbage disposal, Riverside Park was nowhere near the scenic refuge we all enjoy today.  With movement to clean up the river in the early 1980s, Riverside Park started to resemble the beautiful landscape we now enjoy.  Even in the early 1970s, I viewed the river every day when I drove my husband to work at Eastern Michigan University, in our $45 VW Beetle.  As we crossed the river, it was always interesting to see what color the river would be – red, purple, green, or brown.  This ongoing color change was caused by chemicals from the upstream paper company being discharged into it.  Because few families and children used the park for picnics and pleasure, it gained the reputation as a dangerous place to be.  Motorcycle gangs were known to use the land behind City Hall as a place to race their bikes up and down the terraces after dark and drug activity could be observed.  I remember one day in the 1970s, resolving to bring my young family of five children to the park, that we had to stop as a man, during the heat of an August day, dressed in a long fur coat, made dog-barking noises at us when we passed him by the river.  Thankfully those days are now but a distant memory with the beautiful park that we all now enjoy.

Ypsilanti is a town of optimists and hard working generous volunteers and during the past 30 years citizens have joined with city leaders to reclaim the park and help form it into the enjoyable river vista that it is today.  Clean water practices have all but stopped chemicals, pollution, and garbage from spoiling this waterway which is now deemed a “Natural River” by the DNR.  Over this time, new paved walkways have been added, a bathroom building was erected, new light fixtures and electrical outlets were installed, and a beautiful cement stairway was built that now provides an entrance from Huron Street near the Riverside Arts Center.  A gazebo and fishing pier now also grace the waterfront.  The “tridge” connects the park to both Depot Town and adjacent Riverside Park. Fishing habitats have been established, and the river itself is part of the new 100-mile waterway which can be enjoyed by paddling enthusiasts.

As you enjoy your next visit to the park – whether it be to an auto show, Elvis Fest, or the highly popular beer fest, or merely through a casual walk, please take a moment to appreciate the many changes that have occurred in these few acres. I hope that this little journey through time has provided you with an understanding and further appreciation of our beloved Riverside Park – which is truly the heart of Ypsilanti.

New Pathways

by Brooke Marshall ~~~~~

If you stand on the corner of Freer and Dexter-Chelsea roads, at the northwest edge of the Oak Grove East Cemetery, you’ll find yourself at a 2.1-mile section of the Border-to-Border Trail. Nearer to Chelsea, there’s an open-air art gallery of self-portraits painted on wooden planks by area middle school students. Follow the trail through farmland dotted with wildflowers, and near the eastern terminus you’ll pass the “Lost Pyramids of Dexter,” a tongue-in-cheek name for the foundations of an old water tower that were found during trail construction. The trail ends as abruptly as it begins—ironically, just short of the entrance to Abrasive Finishing.

Just a random segment of a bike path, unlinked to any particular destination. But last year, that random segment was only 1.5 miles long. Next year, it will grow by another 0.6 miles to Parker Rd., and if all goes according to plan, in 2024 you’ll be able to use that bike path to travel from Chelsea to Dexter by two wheels or two feet.

The Border-to-Border Trail (B2B) is an ambitious project decades in the making. When it’s complete, the paved, ADA-accessible, ten-foot-wide nonmotorized path will go fifty-five continuous miles across Washtenaw County from its borders with Wayne and Livingston counties. It currently exists as six disconnected trail corridors, 37.75 miles in all, in and around Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor, Dexter, and Chelsea.

But the B2B is more than just a bike path. It’s part of a larger series of initiatives to link southeast Michigan—and maybe one day, the entire state—via nonmotorized transportation infrastructure.

That 0.6-mile extension of the Dexter-Chelsea Rd. trail segment is just one of several B2B projects in the Chelsea and Dexter areas this year. The Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission (WCPARC) is embarking on a multiyear project to update trail signage—the first update since 2008. This project will include signage directing riders through Chelsea.

“In the cities, it’s pretty challenging to build a trail, because the homes are really close to the road, and no one wants a ten-foot trail in their front yard,” says WCPARC Project Manager Roy Townsend.

Signage gives riders the freedom tohop off the route and choose their own adventure—visit shops and restaurants,explore neighborhoods, and eventually link back up with the trail.

Farther east, construction is slated to begin in October on a 1.1-mile segment from Zeeb Rd. to Delhi Metropark along Huron River Dr. This much-anticipated section, delayed for months because of difficulties securing a permit from Amtrak, will complete the connection between all three Metroparks within Washtenaw County. Construction should finish next summer.

“We’re so close to starting to move dirt on that project,” says WCPARC project manager Peter Sanderson. “That’s a project that’s been in the works for more than three years, from engineering through permitting and now into construction. So that’s an exciting one.”

Groundbreaking is also set to begin on the Title IX Plaza in Dexter-Huron Metropark. 2022 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the enactment of Title IX of the Education Amendments, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational and athletic programs that receive federal funding. The Title IX Plaza will honor female athletes of Washtenaw County and one in particular: Karen McKeachie, a world-class triathlete who was struck and killed by a truck while riding her bicycle on Dexter-Chelsea Rd. in 2017.

A mile here, 0.6 miles there, floating sections of trail—the approach may seem somewhat piecemeal. But such is the nature of building a bike path; there’s a lot more to it than just laying pavement.

“The physical trail construction is not overly complicated,” Sanderson says. “But getting it to that stage and aligning all the parts and pieces is typically a multiyear process, and I don’t think a lot of people know that.”

Trail planning is a nuanced negotiation between aesthetics, environmental concerns, cost, land ownership, and public, private, and government entities. For that reason, trail projects tend to progress at a snail’s pace. But momentum is what keeps people interested, which translates to more funding opportunities and can put pressure on slow-moving bureaucratic processes. So, if you have the opportunity to build a 0.6-mile section of trail, you take it. The philosophy, according to Huron Waterloo Pathways Initiative (HWPI) executive director Kiff Hamp, is this: “Build as much trail as you can as fast as you can.”

As the official nonprofit partner of the B2B, HWPI’s mission is to help create more nonmotorized pathways in Washtenaw County and beyond. This public-private partnership is what enables B2B construction to progress so quickly, even if it’s in segments.

In 1984, Washtenaw County officials hatched the idea of the Huron River Greenway, a nonmotorized pathway hugging the Huron River. In the 1990s, this evolved into the Border-to-Border Trail: a collaborative effort between universities, hospitals, WCPARC, and local governments to connect park systems and the cities of Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor, and eventually Dexter and Chelsea.

The vision was expansive, but progress was slow. With a budget of $500,000 to $1 million a year from the county’s parks millage, it took several years to build up enough to fund a single project. At that rate, it could take decades and decades to complete—or never be completed at all.

HWPI changed all that. In 2014, a group of avid cyclists in Chelsea, led by local businessman Jeff Hardcastle, met to brainstorm ways to bring more bike infrastructure to their town. By 2015, they had already accrued more than $50,000 in private donations. When they began researching state funding, they learned they’d get more support if they expanded regionally. This led them to WCPARC.

“We were pursuing our Border-to-Border Trail initiatives independently, and when we first met with Jeff Hardcastle and the HWPI team, it became clear very quickly that we should collaborate,” Sanderson says.

In 2017, the county and the nonprofit signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on the B2B. HWPI handles private fundraising, as well as coordinating between different private, business, civic, and governmental entities. Since it was founded, HWPI has raised more than $14 million. Two of the largest grants came from the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation ($3.25 million in 2018 and $3.5 million in 2022), but the rest came from more than 2,600 individual donors, with gifts ranging from a few dollars to $1 million.

Before HWPI, “we averaged about one mile of construction per year,” Sanderson says. “And now over the past four years we’ve built 13.7 miles of new trail, and we’ve reconstructed about two-and-a-half miles of new trail, so that’s 16.2 miles in four years … We’re doing something like three projects per year, maybe four, depending on the year.”

Funding is split three ways between HWPI’s private donations, state and federal grants, and a portion of the county’s road and trails millage. McKeachie and her husband, Lew Kidder, were instrumental in the initial passage of the millage in 2016, and voters renewed it for four years in 2020.

One mile of trail costs roughly $1 million, and bridges crossing the Huron River also come with a $1 million price tag (although, like everything else these days, those numbers are rising). Estimates for the finished trail, including funds for long-term maintenance, run between $35 and $47 million.

The coming years promise more bicycle infrastructure projects for the communities of Dexter, Chelsea, and Saline—both on and off the B2B. In 2024, Dexter will see the return of the Bell Road Bridge. The historic bridge over the Huron was removed in 1997 because the abutments were crumbling. It is currently in storage, but Townsend said the goal is to install it as part of the B2B crossing Mill Creek in Dexter.

Meanwhile, the city of Chelsea is just 1.1 miles away from being fully connected to the westernmost segment of the B2B. WCPARC was slated to begin construction between Werkner Rd. and Veterans Park this year, but a damaged 200-foot section of culvert has stalled the project. Once the Michigan Department of Transportation replaces the culvert, the B2B project can resume. The revised completion date is summer 2023.

2023 will also see groundbreaking on a 1.6-mile segment of trail along M-52 from North Territorial to Boyce Rd. along M-52 in Lyndon Township. When those two segments of trail are complete, Chelsea residents will have access to nearly ten continuous miles of the B2B.

Although the B2B doesn’t run directly to Saline, residents can connect to it via other bicycle infrastructure. The Lohr-Textile Greenway connects to the Platt Road Trail, which eventually leads to the Huron Parkway Trail, and then up to the B2B in Ann Arbor’s Gallup Park. The only portion that isn’t linked by bicycle infrastructure is the section of Platt Rd. between Packard and Huron Parkway. However, Townsend says that when that section of Platt Rd. is resurfaced, there are plans to add bike lanes.

Before HWPI, “we averaged about one mile of construction per year,” says county parks planner Peter Sanderson. “And now over the past four years we’ve built 13.7 miles of new trail.

The coming years—and decades— may see even wider connections. “We want to be a part of larger trail connectivity,” Hamp says. “That’s one of the huge goals that we have long-term.”

He explains that HWPI is in talks with Jackson and Ingham counties about linking the B2B to the Mike Levine Lakelands Trail in Stockbridge. The thirty-four-mile trail connects Hamburg Township in Livingston County to Blackman Township in Jackson County and is part of the prospective Great Lake–to-Lake Trails Route #1, a 275-mile shared-use trail stretching from Lake Michigan to Lake Huron.

There are also plans to connect to the Lakelands Trail in Pinckney. HWPI and WCPARC are working with Dexter Township to try to extend the trail, sometimes called the Northwest Passage, up to Peach Mountain and Stinchfield Woods, to Silver Lake, through Hell, and up to the Pinckney Lakelands Trailhead.

Farther to the east, Van Buren Township and Wayne County are breaking ground on a one-mile section of trail connecting the B2B to the Van Buren Township Trail in Wayne County. It will ultimately run for seven miles and connect the B2B to Lower Huron Metropark.
“We’re very excited about getting this Van Buren piece because that goes into Lower Huron, which you could connect down to Lake Erie,” Hamp says.

As of 2015, the B2B is also part of the Iron Belle Trail. The highly ambitious plan is to connect Belle Isle in Detroit to Ironwood in the Upper Peninsula via two separate routes: a 1,273-mile unpaved hiking trail and a 791-mile paved bicycle route.

The strategy behind the Iron Belle is the same as the B2B: link existing paths to create an expansive, unified whole. The bicycle portion of the Iron Belle is already 71 percent complete; when the rest is built, it will be the longest state-designated bicycle trail in the United States. When that might be, however, is anyone’s guess.

“Unfortunately, it is not feasible to give an estimate for when the entire route may be connected,” emails Dakota Hewlett, the Iron Belle Trail Coordinator for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “It will be many years yet before the entire route may be connected fully.”

The B2B has run into countless snags building what will eventually be a fifty-five-mile bike path within a single county. Zoom that out to a project attempting to link forty-eight counties and 240 townships, and the complexity is dizzying. How do you build those remaining 229 miles? One mile at a time—or, in the case of the extension of the Dexter-Chelsea segment of the B2B, 0.6 miles at a time.

Because the B2B is a part of the Iron Belle Trail, construction on the B2B ultimately contributes to statewide nonmotorized connectivity. And the completion date for the B2B is significantly easier to estimate than the Iron Belle.

“I think our goal would probably be in the next five years, but as things become complicated, that could get pushed out to six or seven years,” Townsend says.

The years ahead may see more complications because, as Sanderson explains, “Frankly, the easiest sections to build have already been built.”

Probably the single most challenging mile of B2B construction is between Maple Rd. and Wagner Rd. along Huron River Dr. There are no shoulders on either side of the road, the terrain is hilly, and any construction involving the Huron River involves a barrage of environmental regulations. HWPI and WCPARC are currently workshopping potential solutions; changing Huron River Dr. to a one-way road is one option, and another is constructing two massive suspension bridges. Hamp estimates that it could cost between $10 and $12 million and take up to three years just to build that one mile.

“There’s so many things out of your hands,” Hamp laughs. “I would say by ’25, ’26, ideally we would have everything done except [that] one mile.”

The persistence with which HWPI and WCPARC address these challenges attests to the importance of nonmotorized transportation infrastructure. The B2B is more than just a bike path. It’s a means of connecting its users with their county, with pieces of their history, and with one another.

“If we connect where people live to destinations, it gives them reasons to use the trail and maybe not drive everywhere, which is good for the environment, it’s good for their health, it’s good for their mental health,” Sanderson says. “It helps build community, because you see other people on the trail as members of your community. You see them as people, and not as a car.”

This article was reprinted with permission from the publisher.
Photos by Mark Bialek except lower left and right in first image, courtesy HWPI
Link to the original Ann Arbor Observer article