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Chronicle Article on Bikeway Construction Delays and Problems |
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Written by groovygirl
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Tuesday, 24 August 2004 |
Aug. 22, 2004, 8:13AM
Bike trail backers seek to cut red tape
City officials, cyclists and others say the program has been routinely plagued by delays
By MIKE SNYDER
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
Early last year, after months of frustrating discussions with city consultants about problems with the development of bicycle trails along Buffalo Bayou, Houston developer Alan J. Atkinson took matters into his hands.
Aug. 22, 2004, 8:13AM
Bike trail backers seek to cut red tape
City officials, cyclists and others say the program has been routinely plagued by delays
By MIKE SNYDER
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
Early last year, after months of frustrating discussions with city consultants about problems with the development of bicycle trails along Buffalo Bayou, Houston developer Alan J. Atkinson took matters into his hands.
He bought a used bulldozer and backhoe, assembled a construction crew and plunged into the trail-building business.
Since then, Atkinson has overseen the construction of more than a mile of trails on private property along Buffalo Bayou east of downtown.
He and the nonprofit Buffalo Bayou Partnership, which supports his efforts, hope to integrate these trails into an emerging network of government-funded hike-and-bike trails along Houston's bayous.
The story of these private trails provides a window into problems with the city of Houston's bikeway program, which has spent millions of dollars paying multiple layers of consultants to design trails only to run out of money, in several instances, before beginning construction.
City officials, design professionals, bicyclists and others said the trail program has been plagued by delays and inefficiencies for years.
"The city has wasted so much money it's just frightening," said Peter Brown, an architect whose firm the city hired in 1995 to do design work on a White Oak Bayou trail. Nine years later, construction has not begun.
Especially rankling to Brown and others are the city's payments for design services — including about $6 million for "program managers" to oversee other consultants' work.
Mayor Bill White is reviewing recommendations from private-sector advisers to reduce costs while renewing stalled trail projects.
Atkinson said he was motivated to build trails at his expense by his frustration dealing with the city's consultants and by his conviction that he could build trails of comparable quality for less money.
It is uncertain, however, whether the city will agree to maintain the privately built trails or whether the Texas Department of Transportation will connect government-funded trail segments to them.
Recognizing the problem
Those issues need to be resolved before planners can complete a continuous series of trails along both sides of Buffalo Bayou, giving bicyclists the opportunity for a long ride amid the trees and wildlife.
"That is a problem, that it's not a continuous trail system," said Jim Mackey, a member of the Houston Pedestrian-Bicycle Advisory Committee.
The city has built about 13 miles of off-road trails along bayous and elsewhere, and 277 miles in special lanes on city streets, said Wes Johnson, a spokesman for the Public Works and Engineering Department.
About 10 years ago, the city began paying for the trails through federal grants that provide about $3 for every local dollar invested.
The grants are intended to improve air quality by promoting transportation other than automobiles.
But work was suspended around the end of 2002 because the city did not budget funds to combine with federal money.
White plans to include $58 million for off-road bike trails in the city's capital improvements program during the next two years, said his spokesman, Frank Michel.
White's actions are in part a response to advice he has received from leaders of Houston's Quality of Life Coalition, which has been working with city officials to try to reinvigorate the bikeway program and reduce costs.
Oversight in question
In a recent letter, Atkinson and coalition leaders urged White to drop the city's practice of hiring a program manager to oversee the work of other design professionals for bicycle trails.
Brown and others said such oversight is unnecessary in designing what are essentially 10-foot-wide concrete sidewalks.
Johnson said the city hired program managers because they had special expertise in the complex state and federal requirements for building bike trails.
Under the federal grant programs, local officials oversee design of the trails and the Texas Department of Transportation oversees construction.
"You've got these huge agencies that have a lot of red tape. There are a lot of nitty-gritty details that have to be worked out," said Anne Olson, president of the Buffalo Bayou Partnership, which has held contracts with the city since 1996 to help develop the bikeways.
Partnership also blamed
Others say the partnership bears a share of the blame for the delays.
"The Buffalo Bayou Partnership was supposed to advocate and expedite the trail process, and that just has not happened," said Laurie Payne, a board member of Art and Environmental Architecture Inc., a nonprofit group that developed a park near McKee on the south edge of Buffalo Bayou in the 1980s.
Olson said the partnership had provided valuable services to the bikeway program, including writing proposals for the city to secure federal grants and raising more than $3 million for right-of-way and construction costs.
In the past few months, the partnership has built five trail segments east of downtown.
Teri Kaplan, the state bicycle coordinator, said the Texas Department of Transportation could not connect its trails to private trails without ensuring that the private trails met state design standards.
Atkinson said his trails and those built by the partnership generally conform to the state standards.
They are 10 feet wide and made of concrete on a base of reinforced steel.
Some details in the standards regarding slope of the trails and other technical issues are subject to interpretation, Atkinson said, and "the state always takes the most conservative approach."
Maintenance unresolved
Also unresolved is the question of who will maintain the private trails. Early this month, Olson asked the city to provide maintenance services.
Parks and Recreation Director Joe Turner agreed to consider the request, said department spokeswoman Marene Gustin.
But the city would have to ensure that the arrangement was legal, that the trails met the city's standards and that money was available, Gustin said.
The Quality of Life Coalition and others advising White on the program recommended the city move forward with 17 off-street bikeways for which federal funds have been secured, said attorney William Coats, a member of the coalition's steering committee.
The coalition's interest is based on increasing sentiment among business leaders that Houston must develop new recreational amenities to attract talented young professionals.
"We have this great system of bayous, and a lot of the land alongside them is undevelopable," Coats said. "Most of it is inaccessible to the public. By building these bike trails, you make a tremendous amount of green land available."
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