How Would You Spend $50 Million?

This past December, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC) helped coordinate the fourth Mid America Trails & Greenways Conference (MATAG) in Chicago on an icy, bristling week. More than 300 trails stakeholders participated, 30 of whom stayed an extra day to attend RTC's special workshop for the 2010 Campaign for Active Transportation.
 
The focus of the workshop, says Rhonda Border-Boose, director of RTC's Midwest Regional Office, was to help local communities develop their bike-ped plans to advance the active transportation agenda. RTC had first conducted meetings in the eight communities represented; then representatives from those communities attended TrailLink 2007, RTC's biennial conference. This third installment at MATAG aimed to solidify how local governments and organizations would develop their transportation infrastructure if trail funding were doubled in the 2010 reauthorization of SAFETEA-LU. The task: if you were allocated $50 million, how would you spend it?
 
"The reaction has been extremely positive," says Border-Boose. "There was a lot of energy in the room, and we've already seen great momentum since the workshop as we set the tone for the campaign."
 
She says the next phase will be scheduling follow-up meetings at each attending community by mid-March to assess their on-the-ground projects and bike-ped work plans.