A sign at the western end of The Dalles Riverfront Trail shows the distances to various sites. A new report ready for presentation to The Dalles City Council will propose a route to complete the final 1.4-mile segment of the trail.
A sign at the western end of The Dalles Riverfront Trail shows the distances to various sites. A new report ready for presentation to The Dalles City Council will propose a route to complete the final 1.4-mile segment of the trail.
Details of a proposed alternate route for the final segment of The Dalles Riverfront Trail will not be made public until they are presented to the city council, but trail supporters are hopeful the end is finally in sight.
The first section of the Riverfront Trail — which was envisioned as a 10-mile paved pathway linking the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center on the western edge of the city with the visitor’s center at The Dalles Dam on the east side — was completed in 1991. To date, roughly 8.5 miles of the planned 10 miles of trail have been opened to public use.
“The final section to be completed goes from the west end of parking lot at The Dalles Marina to the visitor’s center for The Dalles Dam,” said Dan Durow, who chairs The Dalles Riverfront Trail Committee. “It’s about 1.4 miles, somewhere in that range.”
The project hit a snag last year, when the original plan to extend the trail alongside the north side of Interstate 84 was halted due to issues raised by the Yakama Nation. Tribal members expressed concern about the trail’s possible impacts to archaeological and cultural sites and disruption of tribal fishing activities.
With the tribes’ opposition to a trail on the north side of the freeway, trail developers needed to find another option to bring the trail from the marina parking lot on the north side of I-84 — where the trail currently ends — to the south side of the freeway.
Last fall, experts with CH2M, an engineering company, began the process of finding a feasible alternative route for the portion of the trail that would go from the marina to the dam. Recently, CH2M’s engineers settled on a tentative concept to shift the trail away from the north side of I-84.
“The engineers have a draft document ready with an alternative route identified and some options for that route,” Durow explained. “Once it is all presented to the city council, they will give their feedback and decide whether to proceed.”
The report had been scheduled to go to the city council on Monday evening, March 27. However, that meeting was cancelled due to a lack of a quorum, and another date to share the trail report with members of the city council has not yet been scheduled.
Durow said, until the council is presented with the report, it will not be made public.
“We want to keep it under wraps to give the council a chance to look at it first,” Durow explained.
Councilor Taner Elliott said he hopes the trail can be finished soon.
“The trail is very important to tourism and the community,” Elliott said. “We need to evaluate this new model before proceeding.”
Durow pointed out that there is a proposed new route in the CH2M report, but some decisions and possible alterations may still need to be made.
“There may be options to go over the freeway or under the freeway to get from Point A to Point B,” Durow said. “A tunnel versus a bridge, for example. They’ll be discussing it at the presentation.”
After considering input from the councilors, CH2M engineers will finalize the document and the council will vote to accept or reject the final report. The new alignment will also be reviewed by representatives of the Yakama Nation.
Durow said he has seen the CH2M report, and is optimistic it will meet with approval.
“I’m encouraged,” he said. “Most of the trail’s route is in the ODOT (Oregon Department of Transportation) right of way, and ODOT has been a tremendous partner in this.”
If all the parties sign off on the new alignment, the last section of the trail, from the marina to the dam, would be built in phases.
“We’d select a phase, and it would probably be under construction next spring,” Durow said.
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.