Detroit Free Press

The Detroit Free Press is reporting on Macomb County’s ambitious plans for a non-motorized trail which would encircle the county. The resulting trail would be 70 miles long and completed in 2011.

An ambitious $8.5-million project is under way to connect several existing hike-bike trails into a giant, continuous loop that officials say will stretch from central to northern Macomb County and — hopefully — attract hikers, cyclers, runners and joggers from across the region.

The plans call for the loop to connect the Macomb Orchard Trail in the northern section of the county, south to the Stony Creek Metro Park Trail, east to the Metro Beach Trail, through Mt. Clemens, and then back up to the Macomb Orchard Trail.

This trail loop could connect to Detroit through a much-discussed connection to the Conner Creek Greenway. It could also connect to Madison Heights using a trail along the Red Run.

Link: Macomb County Trailways Master Plan

While this news is welcomed, we certainly would like to see equal effort put towards making Macomb County roads more bike-friendly.

And as we noted earlier the Road Commission for Macomb County is uninformed and unwilling to implement safe cycling on their roads. That simply needs to change if Macomb County hopes to remain competitive with respect to creating liveable communities.

Tags: Conner Creek Greenway, Macomb County, Macomb Orchard Trail, Red Run trail, Stony Creek Metropark

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Trails. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.