The early stages of a plan to incorporate a bike path in Logan County is underway.

Lincoln and Logan County are a part of the Regional Planning Commission. Mayor of the City of Lincoln, Keith Snyder explains the Commission recently was awarded a grant through the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) to begin planning for a future bike path. Mayor Snyder says Lincoln has looked into bike trails in the past, but never taken an extensive look at having a bike trail.

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The city has several unmarked bike trails currently, but there are no marked trails. The Mayor notes that Route 66, which runs North to South through Logan County, has a bike trail that stretches from Chicago to St. Louis, but Logan County is a hole in that trail. He feels this would be a great opportunity to fix that, and establish other trails through the city as well.

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Establishing a bike trail that could ultimately run all through Logan County and connect with other bike trails of surrounding counties could take anywhere from ten to twenty years to become a reality. Mayor Snyder hopes to have some short term goals in their plans that they could easily accomplish.

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While a cost for all this is not really able to be established yet, the Mayor notes they will seek out grants that could make the cost more manageable, and at the same time, allow the city and county to begin these trails. Mayor Snyder adds, other avenues they could explore, would be implementing bike lanes on streets that are being redone and things like that.