One of the best-known recreation trails in the region could include a bridge over Virginia 114.
By
381-1661
Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times
Huckleberry Trail, at New River Valley Mall entrance
It's not hard to imagine Christiansburg's new town Councilman Brad
Stipes on his high horse -- or bicycle -- shouting at the top of his
lungs: "Hi-ho, Huckleberry!"
Stipes and his clerk-of-council wife, Michele, are two of the
Huckleberry Trail's most enthusiastic users. The happy couple seem
happiest on the popular pedestrian path with one or more of the six
children in their blended family.
"We use it in about every way it can be used legally," said Brad
Stipes, a 42-year-old civil engineer. "We bike, walk, run, walk the
dog."
The Stipes family dog, a 110-pound Labrador named Cutter, could very well be the trail's most enthusiastic canine user, too.
"That's the best place in the world to Cutter," Stipes said. "The Huckleberry Trail has the best sniffs in Montgomery County."
Stipes, who sought a spot on council in 2006 with the goal of making
Christiansburg a more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly community, had
something to shout about at the June 5 meeting.
It was he and Bill Ellenbogen, president of Friends of the
Huckleberry, who announced plans to extend the now well-known regional
greenway trail -- currently running from the Blacksburg library to New
River Valley Mall -- south to the Christiansburg Recreation Center.
Plans also include extending it north from Blacksburg to the Jefferson
National Forest.
Eventually, the intention is to bring the Huckleberry to what Stipes
calls "the heart of Christiansburg." He foresees the trail continuing
from the recreation center to Christiansburg High School and possibly
to the town's new aquatic center from there.
"I've had a passion for alternate transportation, for a walkable
community and for sustainable land-use practices," Stipes explained.
"The extension of the Huckleberry Trail into the heart of
Christiansburg represents an opportunity to create a recreational spine
that will give people choices."
Stipes thinks that once the spine is built, businesses and
communities will attach to it. He envisions a "snowball effect" with
trail extensions going in several directions.
Ellenbogen, the Blacksburg businessman responsible for spearheading the original 5 34-mile
Huckleberry Trail built in 1994 after five long years of groundwork,
told Christiansburg's council that the trail is "near and dear to my
heart."
Expansion into the town, he said, "is something that's been
discussed since 1989. Now, an engineering study has been commissioned."
With the help of a $14,000 donation from the Pennsylvania Real
Estate Investment Trust -- the company that owns New River Valley Mall
-- Friends of the Huckleberry has hired a Christiansburg firm, Gay and
Neel Inc., to begin an engineering study. That's expected to be
completed this summer.
The big question is how the trail will cut across busy Peppers Ferry
Road (Virginia 114). For years, the Virginia Department of
Transportation has planned to widen a section of the road entering
Christiansburg, but those plans are on hold because of funding
shortages.
As an engineer for Anderson & Associates, Stipes doesn't see a
big problem there. The solution, he says, is one word: bridge.
"[Virginia] 114 has already been designed," he said, noting that a
bridge crossing the road would be smaller and simpler to build than the
bridge that crosses the old railroad line about a mile from the New
River Valley Mall on the existing Huckleberry Trail.
"Most everyone perceives that the 114 crossing is an insurmountable crossing. It is not," he said. "It's just a bridge."
Stipes said Gay and Neel would tally an estimated cost, as well as
determine the best place to build the crossing and the route of the
1.7-mile trail extension now being discussed.
Ellenbogen told the Christiansburg council that private firms have
expressed willingness to contribute funds and that state and federal
grant monies are a real possibility.
"That historically is how the Huckleberry Trail has been built,"
Stipes said, noting that Cornerstone Homes -- the development company
that built the Villas at Peppers Ferry behind New River Valley Mall --
already has made a donation to the trail extension effort. Residents in
the Virginia 114 community, he added, could reap great benefits.
Stipes said a recent Sunday drive down Virginia 114 brought the need
to mind when he saw a couple walking on the roadside, trying to push a
baby stroller through the gravel.
The traffic whizzing by and the congestion of vehicles on the
stretch of road make it dangerous to walk there. The extension, he
says, would offer residents of Peppers Ferry developments access to the
trail without risking life and limb.
"The concept of a walkable community excites me greatly," he said.
Several who regularly use the Huckleberry Trail are excited, too, by the plan to take it farther into Christiansburg.
Norma Musselman, 44, and Sue Collins, 63, walk three times a week at
the mall trail head. Collins, who lives in Pembroke but works in
Blacksburg, said she has lost 43 pounds since she started walking.
"It'd be good," said Musselman of the proposed extension. "It would give us a change of scenery."
Bicyclist Kelly Meredith, a 25-year-old Virginia Tech student, said she enjoys the Huckleberry's rural quality.
"I love riding this trail. It's very quiet. It's very beautiful. I
love the smell of honeysuckle and the huckleberries that grow here."
Meredith approved of the extension but wondered about the disruption to traffic a bridge might cause.
"It'll be a disruption to put a bridge in," she said. "Honestly, it
would be cool if they could put a tunnel underneath, but that might not
be feasible."
"They'd have to put up some type of bridge," said Vernon Seagraves,
a 59-year-old Christiansburg resident who walks the trail regularly. "I
don't know how they're going to cross Peppers Ferry, but that would be
nice. You'd be surprised at the number of people who walk the trail."
Grant money, Ellenbogen and Stipes told the Christiansburg council,
is out there for governments dedicated to offering transportation
alternatives and community connectivity.
Stipes said November should provide a "milestone" for the project
because that's when applications are due for federal Transportation
Enhancement Program grants, the same source funding improvements to
downtown Christiansburg. Ellenbogen will lead a push to get grant
funding for the trail.
A timetable for the finished project has not yet been determined,
but Stipes said he thinks it could be done in three years. He doesn't
deny that holdups are inevitable with such an undertaking.
In its early years, Huckleberry Trail construction was stalled by
bureaucratic snafus, environmental regulations and such variables as
unearthing American Indian artifacts along the route.
But Stipes is confident the extension won't have so many hurdles to jump.
"This isn't just wishful thinking," he told the council June 5. "This is going to happen."
Cutter, his Lab, is 10 years old, after all. Stipes would like to
see the trail lengthened to the Christiansburg Recreation Center while
Cutter can still enjoy it.
"It will extend his sniffing domain," he said.
Greenway plans extend past Huckleberry
CHRISTIANSBURG -- The well-used Huckleberry Trail aside, in
Christiansburg pedestrians cannot walk between shopping centers in the
mall sprawl on Franklin Street -- at least not without scrambling up
embankments or climbing over walls.
They must get in their cars and drive onto the busy stretch of U.S. 460 to move from one location to another.
Imagine a Montgomery County where people could not only walk but also bike between such destinations.
Such a system is being studied to link hiking and biking trails
among the designated county villages of Riner, Belview, Prices Fork,
Plum Creek, Shawsville, Elliston and Lafayette.
With relatively few miles of multiuse trails and limited amounts of
paved shoulders for biking or hiking, county residents have little
choice but to get in cars and drive to work, school and elsewhere.
A countywide bike or trail system could remove some commuter
traffic, promote health and exercise, and boost economic development
through the recreational use of these links.
The initiative was initially funded as an alternative transportation
project by the Virginia Department of Transportation, said Joe Powers,
county planning director. The Village Transportation Links plans will
be added to the 2004 county Comprehensive Plan once they are approved.
Vlad Gavrilovic, with the Charlottesville-based Renaissance Planning
Group, reported to the county board of supervisors last week on VITL
progress so far.
Planning has been under way for about seven months, Gavrilovic said.
The VITL concept is to develop a bicycle, pedestrian and greenways
master plan for each village, providing nonmotorized links among them.
Eventually, these trails would be extended to Blacksburg,
Christiansburg and Radford, providing nonmotorized access to schools,
parks, businesses and other points.
They would also link up with the Huckleberry Trail, New River Trail
and other existing recreational trails in the region, even the Roanoke
Valley Greenway.
Supervisor Gary Creed said he doubted that the VITL plans would be realized any time soon.
"We're not looking at something in most of our lifetimes," he said.
"But we have to have the foresight to know we want to go from here to
the other side of town in some kind of line."
Gavrilovic said there have already been several workshops and
meetings with citizens on the VITL plan. Four public sessions were held
since last fall to get feedback on plan goals, route alignments,
crossings standards and implementation priorities.
