C.P. leg of bike trail may link with Ill. pathCROWN POINT | It's only a first step, but a study recently undertaken by city officials intends to put Crown Point on the map of a bike trail eventually extending to the Chicago lakefront.
The city in December agreed to a $5,000 contract with RQAW, an Indianapolis-based consulting and engineering firm, for initial work planning the Pennsy Greenway Trail through Crown Point.
A master plan has the Pennsy trail stretching from Crown Point northwest through Schererville and Dyer, connecting with a Munster segment, and then into Illinois through Lansing, Burnham and north past Wolf Lake. Eventually, the Chicago Lakeshore Trail is to extend southward to join it.
"It's such a broad and visionary concept," said Mitch Barloga, a hike- and bike-trail planner with the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission.
The Crown Point segment of the trail is expected to carve a path northwest out of the city near the White Hawk development, Barloga said.
The existing Erie-Lackawanna Trail will connect with the Pennsy Trail most likely at 93rd Avenue west of the Lake County government complex, Barloga said.
The ambitious regional project includes work by neighboring Schererville, whose six-mile segment will be the longest of local communities, Barloga said.
Schererville's first two-mile section is being built between Town Hall, on Joliet Street, and Rorhman Park, southeast of the town, Barloga said.
A segment of the trail through Munster's Centennial Park already is completed, and eventually will connect with Schererville at Town Hall, Barloga said.
It's expected within 10 years bicyclists can travel the entire route between Northwest Indiana and the Chicago lakefront without ever leaving a bike path, Barloga said.
Planning for the Pennsy Trail segment in Crown Point comes on the heels of the city's recent completion of a two-mile addition to the Erie-Lackawanna Trail taking it from 93rd Avenue south to near the city's downtown.
"We're looking forward to the process again," city parks director Jennie Burgess said.