One of the most disconcerting aspects of some bike maps is their habit of showing trails planned for the future as if they were already built. I recall two times where I set out to follow a bike trail that the map showed as existing, only to find that my only choice was a road with heavy traffic and no shoulder. I recently ran into two examples of this, although neither is likely to place the bicyclist in danger.

Brookfield’s Greenway page lists three projects scheduled for 2011-12. The current version of its map shows all three as presently existing. Late last fall, after printing the map, I decided to try all three, only to discover they didn’t exist.

Not to be outdone, Milwaukee’s bike plan shows existing and planned trails. Two of the “existing” trails run south from downtown along former railroad rights of way, one from Washington to Maple and the other along the Kinnickinnic River south of Lincoln. With the unseasonably warm weather last weekend, I decided to check them out. No sign of either although I spotted some construction that may be an early sign of conversion of the latter.

The magazine Rails to Trails has a really excellent article on the Hank Aaron Trail that runs the width of Milwaukee County, starting at the Lakeshore State Park on Milwaukee’s lake front and running east to the Oak Leaf Trail on the west side of the county.

Let me also make a pitch for joining the Rails to Trails organization that advocates for bike trails and worked hard to head off proposals to end federal funding of bike facilities.

Kenosha county has recently paved its two sections of bike trails: from the Racine County line south to 35th St in Kenosha and from 89th St south to the Illinois state line. Thus the entire trail between Racine and Kenosha is now paved.

I just rode the newly paved middle section of the Lake Country trail. The trail is now paved throughout its length (except for a short detour near county P). While the trail is mostly a rail-to-trail conversion with mild grades, the newly paved portion follows a power line directly over a moraine next to the Nagawaukee golf course. So it is quite steep (I am told the state denied a grant application because the grade did not meet standards), but still much nicer paved.

In the same area, the trail along Cushing Park Rd between the Lake Country trail and the Glacial Drumlin trail is mostly open (one bridge was still unfinished when I looked but is easy to get around by taking the road). A side trail leads across the park to connect with the road up Lapham Peak.

An extension of the Brown Deer Trail is now paved and ready to open between Brown Deer Rd and Brown Deer Park. This is good news for several reasons. It eliminates the need for a potentially dangerous left turn between Green Bay Ave and the old village center of Brown Deer. It also means that the Interurban trail system is connected to Milwaukee county’s Oak Leaf Trail. Finally, the Interurban Trail system now runs from Brown Deer Park to Oostberg in Sheboygan County (with a few on-street interruptions).

(cross-posted at Wisconsin Bike Routes)

This just in from Marty Weigel:

The new underpass on the Oak Leaf @ Bluemound Rd. (app 12200 West in Tosa)
is open. Fresh asphalt, allows safer, uninterrupted travel under busy
Bluemound Rd. next to Underwood Creek.

The Oak Leaf Trail is the premier bike trail in the Milwaukee area. The underpass will make cycling near Blue Mo0und Rd much safer and more pleasant.

Shortly after the bridge carrying the Ozaukee Interurban Trail over Interstate 43 opened, I decided to try it out. Looking down, I spotted a couple of bicyclists on the frontage road staring up at the bridge and obviously wondering how to get on the trail. Unfortunately for them, the bridge spanned the frontage road along with the interstate, with no connection.

As more bike paths are built, particularly on converted railroads, we are likely to see more situations where two bike routes cross without connecting. In my last post, I listed a number of such situations with the Hank Aaron State Trail. The HAST is an extreme case, both because it starts in a valley and then moves to a former railroad, but there are a number of similar cases in Milwaukee:

• The new Beer Line Trail passes under North Ave without connecting to it.
• The East Side Oak Leaf Trail passes under Prospect, Farwell, and Locust without direct connections. There is a trail connection mid-block between Farwell and Prospect and one about a block south of Locust.
• A path starts at the east end of Brady St, descends the bluff to the Oak Leaf Trail. It then connects a bridge that passes over Lincoln Memorial Drive to connect to the bike path on the lake side of the drive. There is no connection, however, to the path on the west side of the drive.
• The Marsupial bridge under the Holton St bridge skips over Commerce St.

Just being in the right horizontal location may not be enough if one is too high or too low.

I leave Saturday for a bike tour across the state of Wisconsin. I’ll ride from the Twin Cities to Green Bay, approximately 325 miles. The tour will be self contained, about a week in length and the first significant bike tour I’ve taken in over 20 years.

My original plan was to ride the Mountain Bay Trail from Wausau, Wisconsin to Green Bay, but that changed a couple of weeks ago when I had the chance to test ride the eastern end of the trail. The ride began at the end of an all day rain. The first thirty miles were on paved road, then I jumped on the trail. It took only a couple of meters for me to realize that my speed on the trail would be permanently reduced from about 16 mph to 11 mph, and even that reduced speed required a substantial increase in effort. The trail in this area, near Shawano, looks and feels like a jeep trail with two narrow tracks, soft wet gravel and occasional puddles. I turned off at the first cross road that went in the direction I was heading.

Wisconsin has an extensive network of paved back roads, some of them with as little as 50 cars per day, or one every half hour. Central Wisconsin was flattened 10,000 years ago by glaciers, so the road system is pretty much in a grid. With a resource like that, all I had to do to get to my destination was ride generally northwest by going first north, then west and making my turns almost at random until I neared my destination. For me this is the essence of bicycle touring- to get from Point A to Point B, but not necessarily in a straight line. I look forward to a week of similar meanderings.

Several plans have been announced for construction in 2011:

• Hank Aaron Trail extension. Presently the Hank Aaron State Trail ends at 94th Place in West Allis. Bikes can continue west on the old right of way but the pathway is quite rough, more suitable for mountain bikes than road bikes. Plans have been announced to put  in a temporary crushed stone surface connecting the HAST to the Oak Leaf Trail. Following the reconstruction of the Zoo Interchange, plans are to construct a paved surface.
• Lake Country Trail paving. Last year both the western and eastern ends of the Lake Country Trail were paved, leaving the middle section, mainly through Nagawaukee County Park, unpaved. On its website the Waukesha county parks department has announced that paving the middle section will start this spring. This announcement should be treated with a bit of skepticism since the paving of the middle section was originally announced for last year.
• Oak Leaf to Ozaukee Interurban Trail connector. For some time plans have developed, and grants have been announced, to build a trail connecting the Ozaukee Interurban Trail (in the person of the Brown Deer Trail at Brown Deer Road) to the Oak Leaf Trail at Hampton Avenue on the north edge of Estabrook Park. The connector would use both WE Energies right of way dating from the old Interurban tracks and unused railroad tracks. Phase I of this project from Brown Deer Road to Bradley Road, connecting the Brown Deer Trail to the Oak Leaf Trail at Brown Deer Park, scheduled to take place this summer. While short, this section would eliminate a very tricky left turn between Green Bay Road and the old village of Brown Deer, a turn that is dangerous in both directions.
• Downtown to Bay View connector. This path would utilize long-abandoned railroad tracks east of First Street between National Avenue and Kinnickinnic Ave, replacing part on the on-street route between downtown Milwaukee and Bay View. This project was first presented some years ago, unfortunately as an alternative to allowing bicycles on the Hoan Bridge.

I would be very disappointed if these are the only bike-oriented projects in southeastern Wisconsin. Please let me know about those I have missed.

Cross-posted at Wisconsin Bicycle Routes.

When I first researched the Milwaukee and SE Wisconsin bike map, I prepared some notes on the routes and posted them on my website of Wisconsin Bike Routes. They had not been updated since, an omission pointed out by one of our readers.

They have now been updated and can be seen here. I very much appreciated comments and additions.