Bicycling in 3D

Posted by Bikeverywhere, July 25th, 2011

Shortly after the bridge carrying the Ozaukee Interurban Trail over Interstate 43 opened, I decided to try it out. Looking down, I spotted a couple of bicyclists on the frontage road staring up at the bridge and obviously wondering how to get on the trail. Unfortunately for them, the bridge spanned the frontage road along with the interstate, with no connection.

As more bike paths are built, particularly on converted railroads, we are likely to see more situations where two bike routes cross without connecting. In my last post, I listed a number of such situations with the Hank Aaron State Trail. The HAST is an extreme case, both because it starts in a valley and then moves to a former railroad, but there are a number of similar cases in Milwaukee:

  • The new Beer Line Trail passes under North Ave without connecting to it.
  • The East Side Oak Leaf Trail passes under Prospect, Farwell, and Locust without direct connections. There is a trail connection mid-block between Farwell and Prospect and one about a block south of Locust.
  • A path starts at the east end of Brady St, descends the bluff to the Oak Leaf Trail. It then connects a bridge that passes over Lincoln Memorial Drive to connect to the bike path on the lake side of the drive. There is no connection, however, to the path on the west side of the drive.
  • The Marsupial bridge under the Holton St bridge skips over Commerce St.

Just being in the right horizontal location may not be enough if one is too high or too low.

Filed under: Bikeverywhere News