Group commits funds to CEMAR trail

CEDAR RAPIDS - The long-talked-about CEMAR Trail connecting downtown Cedar Rapids to downtown Marion now has secured a funding commitment to actually get built.

The Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization, which includes representatives of Cedar Rapids, Marion, Hiawatha, Robins and Linn County, on Thursday voted unanimously to commit $4.5 million in federal and state transportation funds it controls to the project. The money will pay to build unfinished Cedar Rapids segments of the CEMAR Trail, from Cedar Lake in downtown Cedar Rapids to the vicinity of 33rd Street Drive SE, along with segments in Marion that will take the paved trail north to Thomas Park and then to Marion Square Park downtown.

“We just funded everything (for the CEMAR Trail),” Monica Vernon, a Cedar Rapids City Council member and chairwoman of the MPO, said after the organization met at Cedar Rapids City Hall. “It will just pull the two communities together.”

She pointed to a report from Steve Hershner, vice president of the Linn County Trails Association, who told the Corridor MPO that the association's board in July ranked the completion of the CEMAR Trail as the group's top priority.

He called the CEMAR Trail a “tremendous opportunity” to connect two downtown “destinations.”

The Corridor MPO has the ability to control about $4 million a year in federal transit dollars that pass through the state and down to local level, and in April, it decided to steer 80 percent of those funds to trails rather than using nearly all the funds for street projects. Robins Mayor Ian Cullis, for one, disagreed with the shift, but Cedar Rapids' representatives make up the majority of the MPO and voted unanimously for the change.

The money approved for the completion of the CEMAR Trail will be available in federal fiscal year 2016, which begins in October 2015.

Corridor MPO funds require the local communities receiving the money to pay 20 percent of the cost of a project, which officials in Cedar Rapids and Marion said the cities will do.

Tom Treharne, Marion's director of planning and development, said the availability of Corridor MPO trail funding will enable Marion to get the paved CEMAR Trail all the way to its downtown. The trail paving will enter Marion south of Highway 100, go north on an existing trail segment that is now crushed rock to Thomas Park and then follow a rail right of way to downtown Marion.

The 23-member MPO spent about 90 minutes on Thursday discussing what it wants to see in a metro trail system of some 135 miles of trails, roadway bike lanes and sidewalks, of which 100 miles has yet to be built or identified. The group said there was a need have a connected system where people can get from home to the trail system rather than having to load up bicycles and drive to a trail.

The Corridor MPO projects that it will have $5.8 million more in transportation funds to use in fiscal 2016, and the group's member jurisdictions will be preparing proposals for trails projects to compete for some of the money.

The city of Marion on Thursday submitted a proposal for a paved trail segment from 35th Street to a proposed trail underpass at Highway 13. The proposed section, which was awarded limited funds in 2007 as an unpaved trail, will tie in with Marion's central corridor project through the downtown and with the Grant Wood Trail on the east side of Highway 13.

The Corridor MPO tabled a vote on the project and will consider it along with other projects at upcoming meetings.