By DEBRA HAIGHT
BCR Correspondent
BERRIEN SPRINGS – Planning the area’s future bicycle and walking trails is the focus of a meeting next week at Andrews University.
The Southwest Michigan Planning Commission is sponsoring the Berrien County Non-Motorized Summit along with the Best Practices Committee of the Strategic Leadership Council and Andrews University. It will be held Wednesday, Feb. 6 from 7-9 p.m. in the lobby of the Howard Performing Arts Center on the Andrews campus.
SWMPC Senior Planner Marcy Hamilton said the summit is free and open to the public. The program will start with a brief presentation on non-motorized facilities in the county and be followed by a work session to gather input from attendees.
She said the summit is one of several gatherings to be held throughout Southwest Michigan over the next several months on the subject of non-motorized facilities. Those type of facilities include walking and shared use trails, bike lanes and paved shoulders that connect communities.
“The input from the meeting will be used to develop priorities in the MDOT Southwest Michigan Non-Motorized Plan that will be completed later this year,” she said. “We will be holding meetings in the other six counties over the next several months.”
The other counties with input into the Southwest Michigan Non-Motorized Plan and Bicycling Guide are Cass, Van Buren, Branch, Calhoun, Kalamazoo and St. Joseph.
Current trail efforts underway in Berrien County include the 34-mile Indiana Michigan River Valley Trail connecting Niles to Mishawaka, Ind., the Berrien County Linear Park between existing parks from Bridgman to New Buffalo and the Marquette Greenway project which will be a 58 mile trail connecting New Buffalo to Chicago.
In addition, individual communities like Buchanan, St. Joseph and Benton Harbor have their own trail systems. Bike lane/paved shoulder projects are in the plans in the Twin Cities area as well as along sections of Red Arrow Highway and M-63.
Hamilton said there continues to be interest in connecting not only the nearby communities of Niles and Buchanan but also Niles to communities northward such as Berrien Springs and St. Joseph-Benton Harbor.
Other regional and statewide plans are also being updated this year, including ones for Berrien County parks, Niles area and Twin Cities area public transportation and statewide transportation.
The MDOT long-range transportation plan is known as Michigan Mobility 2045 and has the goal of establishing a vision with priorities for transportation for the next 25 years. The development phase for the plan runs to April, followed by a more targeted phase starting in May.
The state is gathering public input in a number of ways including the use of Metroquest which is an innovative technology to extend outreach to a larger and more diverse group of state residents through the use of realistic transportation scenarios.
Input will also be gathered through telephone town halls for as many as 10,000 people this year as well as attitudes and perceptions surveys and visioning sessions with key stakeholders. The public can view the plan and provide comments at www.michiganmobility.org.
In Berrien County, the Berrien County Parks & Recreation Commission is seeking input on its new 2020-2024 Five Year Plan. The plan will cover Rocky Gap, Silver Beach, Love Creek, Madeline Bertrand, Paw Paw River, Historic Courthouse Square and Galien River County Parks, as well as the Red Arrow Linear Trail.
One public input meeting took place in mid-January and more will be held throughout the year at locations around the county.
The Twin Cities Area Transportation Study and Niles Area Transportation Study are both working on federal block grant eligible road project plans for the 2020-2023 period.
The Twin Cities group is expected to get $3.9 million over that time period and covers the area from Hagar Township in the north to Bridgman in the south. The Niles group covers the Niles, Buchanan and Edwardsburg areas and is expected to receive $2.3 million in federal funds for road projects during that period.
The SWMPC is working with both transportation study groups and more information on both plans can be found on the www.swmpc.org website. The SWMPC is the planning organization for Berrien, Cass and Van Buren Counties. It is one of 14 regional planning organizations in the state.
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