People will be eventually able to walk or ride a bike from downtown Carson City to the Carson River once improvements to a path on the east side of the city are finished next year.
The state and city parks project will pick up from what is called a "linear park trail" that can be reached from downtown by sidewalks and runs from Governor's Field Park on Roop Street, behind Freemont Elementary School on Saliman Road and to Fairview Drive south of East Fifth Street.
The new trail that can be used by walkers, bicyclists and horse riders will run north on Fairview Drive to East Fifth Street, across Fifth Street and north on Fairview Drive to the Moffat Open Space near Hells Bells Road.
From there, people can take the Riverview Park trail to the Carson River in the Ambrose Carson River Natural Area.
The 2.5 mile addition was part the city's masterplan to fill in broken links in the city's trail system and will allow people to get across the city more easily than ever before, according to Vern Krahn, parks planner, and Ann Bollinger, open space coordinator.
"There's a whole lot of trails," Bollinger said, "it's just connecting them."
The Carson City Parks & Recreation Department has finished its east side of the project and the state is working on its piece by Fairview Drive and Fifth Street as part of the $45 million extension bring the city bypass to Fairview Drive.
Scott Magruder, a representative from the Nevada Department of Transportation, said putting in the path is a big commitment from the state that it will be "a good thing for the entire economy."
He said the state's section of the path will be done in the summer about the same time the new phase of the bypass is done.
The bypass will take away some of the paths for horse riding, so it was important that the new part of the trail includes a dirt path beside the payment to ride on, Krahn said.
"So they always don't have to trailer their horse everywhere they go," he said.
Future plans for the trail include extending it north to Lepire Drive, then to Empire Ranch Golf Course so Eagle Valley Middle School students can walk or ride without going along busy Fairview Drive.
The city's side of the current path extension took about two years to plan and cost $165,000 in grants.
- Contact reporter Dave Frank at dfrank@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1212.
Muscle Powered has mapped the existing bike routes in Carson City:
http://www.musclepowered.org/bikeroutes.asp?nv=broutes
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