Steer Creek Trail, a short path that makes a big connection

For my Master’s Degree in Sustainable Transportation class project I’m researching short paths that provide key connections. I first thought of this concept when I lived in Kirksville and used the Steer Creek Trail to access the Kings Court subdivision. The first time I biked on Steer Creek Trail, I laughed out loud because the trail is nearly as wide as the dead-end road next to it and carries more traffic than that road! But at the north end of the trail is a bridge across Steer Creek, where the dead-end road ends.

“They could have saved some money,” I thought, “if they’d just put in the bridge and not bothered with the rest of the trail.”

The bridge is the key connection. Without the bridge across Steer Creek, the only way to get in or out of Kings Court is Baltimore St, a busy, high volume street. Even I avoided biking on Baltimore when I lived in Kirksville. In the absence of Steer Creek Trail, residents of Kings Court had to drive cars. There was only one mode choice.

I asked an old friend, retired Public Works Director John Buckwalter, about the history of Steer Creek Trail. It was completed in 2002 with funds from the Recreational Trails Program (RTP), a federal program administered through the Dept of Natural Resources (the same program that funded FLATS Phase 1). The bridge was a reclaimed bridge from a county road. Adair County replaced a county bridge near Yarrow through the MoDOT Off-System Bridge Replacement and Restoration (BRO) program. County crews left the old bridge by the stream and city crews disassembled it and loaded it onto trucks. They remodeled it to be narrower and built a new deck.

I love this story because it’s an example of how a federal program (RTP) combined with a state program (BRO) resulted in the local Steer Creek Trail. Sadly, RTP (now part of Transportation Enhancements) has been drastically reduced, and BRO ended even before the new MoDOT 325 System cuts. That is why it is so important for local citizens to be involved at all levels of government, local, state, and federal. An easy way to be involved is to join your local bike/ped advocacy organization (in Kirksville, FLATS), the Missouri Bicycle & Pedestrian Federation, and the League of American Bicyclists. Federal and state programs have a big impact on local transportation options, often in ways we can’t predict.

Although we don’t have traffic counts for Steer Creek Trail, Mr. Buckwalter mentioned learning how much many residents depend on the trail when it was shut down briefly during repairs on the adjacent sanitary facility. Kings Court residents use Steer Creek Trail to bike to Hy-Vee, Truman State University, the public school, and downtown. Once the FLATS trail is completed connecting downtown Kirksville to Thousand Hills State Park, you will be able to bike to the park in less than an hour. Steer Creek Trail is itself a popular destination for fitness and leisure, with many people walking and jogging on it.

Long term plans in 2002 called for one-mile Steer Creek Trail to extend another half-mile to Hwy P, but no further progress has happened. However, for my class project, I’m proposing a 325-foot connector between Kings Rd and Meadow Ln. The subdivisions to the north of Kings Court are well connected to each other by quiet, residential streets. This short connector to Meadow Ln would open up access to Steer Creek Trail for literally hundreds of people.

Mr. Buckwalter was able to clear up the mystery of why Steer Creek Trail parallels Cottage Grove Ave, a narrow dead-end road hardly bigger than the trail itself. Back in the day, people cut through the neighborhood west of Cottage Grove Ave to avoid the stoplight at Illinois and Baltimore. Since then, two streets that used to connect to Cottage Grove Ave have been removed, and now there is almost no traffic on Cottage Grove Ave.