Activities Report: Missouri Priority Bicycle/Pedestrian/ADA List

This is part of a series, "What has MoBikeFed done for you in 2010?"  Read the remaining articles here.

This time of year many are asking--what have you been doing?  What have the Federation and the Foundation been doing?

Waiting for MoDOT by zaskem on FlickR

We've put together a multi-part report. Here is part three:

Working with MoDOT and dozens of groups and organizations across Missouri to identify the state's bicycle and pedestrian priorities

This year for the first time ever MoDOT approached bicycle and pedestrian groups across Missouri to ask them to identify the highest priority projects, as identified and prioritized by users, for bicycling, walking, and Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) projects in all 10 MoDOT Districts across Missouri.

MoBikeFed took the lead in working with MoDOT to determine the parameters for this program, developing a structure and procedure for soliciting, organizing, and evaluating projects, organizing and providing guidelines and materials to over twenty Local Working Groups and Special Working Groups covering every one of MoDOT's ten districts across Missouri, soliciting nearly 300 project idea submissions from individuals and groups in every corner of the state, coordinating the project scoring and prioritization, and submitting the final list of project ideas to MoDOT.

This represents the first time MoDOT has requested such details project requests and prioritization from user groups and the capacity and relationships with key bicycle, pedestrian, and trails groups and agencies across the state that the Foundation has developed over the past five years allowed this project to be completed effectively and in a timely manner.

The highest priority projects submitted range from ideas to connect the city of Hermann to the Katy Trail, to fixing drain grates unsafe for bicyclists on MoDOT bridges in downtown Kansas City, to creating a new section of the national Mississippi River Bicycle Trail leading from Hannibal to Keokuk, to creating a new Route 66 bicycle route across Missouri from St. Louis to Joplin, to creating the first-ever detailed online maps of all seven national bicycle routes that cross Missouri, to adding bicycle safety design elements to specific roads, projects, and bridges planned for projects in St. Louis, Farmington, Cape Girardeau, St Joseph, Maryville, Rolla, Kirksville, Chillicothe, Columbia, and Warsaw.  

Important and much-needed pedestrian improvements were rated as high priories in Springfield, Jefferson City, St Joseph, Clifton Hill, St Charles, O'Fallon, and Washington.

The Top 100 projects identified by Missouri bicyclists, pedestrians, and trail users in this project have a value conservatively estimated at $35 million dollars.  However the real value of the project has been the relationships built and the cooperation fostered between Missouri bicycling, walking, trails, and disabilities organizations and the agencies that build and maintain the roads, shoulders, sidewalks, and trails that these users depend on.

Your donations power our work in support of bicycling and walking in Missouri . . . 

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zaskem/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0