By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
For years, northern Wood County has been where bike trails came to a dead end.
In the southern half of the county, the Slippery Elm Trail stretches from Bowling Green and North Baltimore. And across the river to the north, bike trails run circles around Lucas County. And to the east, the North Coast Inland Trail reaches from Lorain to the eastern edge of Wood County.
“The black hole of bike trails is right here,” said Rex Huffman, executive director of the Wood County Port Authority.
That may be about to change.
On Tuesday, the Wood County Park District Board voted unanimously to get on board the port authority’s plan to turn abandoned railroad into part of the Chessie Circle Trail. If approved for funding, the trail could potentially stretch from the Maumee River near Bates Road to Millbury on the eastern edge of Wood County.
The park district has owned the abandoned railway adjacent to W.W. Knight Preserve in Perrysburg Township for years, but has lacked funding to build the bike trail.
That is where the port authority comes in, Huffman explained. The organization builds projects that benefit the area, he said.
The port authority had previously bought the old rusty bridge carrying the tracks over the Maumee River – with the thought that while it no longer carried trains, it could handle pedestrian and bicycle traffic.
However, no engineer would sign off on the project, Huffman said.
“No one wanted to touch the bridge,” he said.
So the old bridge was torn down, with plans made to rebuild it if the funds became available.
“I’m telling you, we may be able to get funds for this,” Huffman told the board Tuesday afternoon.
But any funding possibilities will likely go nowhere unless there is a trail to hook up to on the Wood County side of the river. Lucas County already has a park and trail on its side, linking into trails near the University of Toledo.
“We need to have a bike trail on our side,” Huffman said. “We have to have something to connect it to on this side.”
The port authority is applying for $500,000 from the Clean Ohio Trail Fund, and is looking into funding available through Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur’s office.
Once the trail is built, it will be handed off to the Wood County Park District, Huffman explained.
“We’re going to build it, but we’re not going to operate trails,” he said.
“We’d like to partner with you to get this built,” he said, predicting the first funds could be awarded in 2024. The port authority would continue applying for more funds each year.
“We’ll stop when we connect to the bike trails in Millbury,” Huffman said. “We’re looking everywhere we can for funding.”
Ideally, the trail would somehow connect to Perrysburg as well, he said.
The bike trail would travel the abandoned railroad – not River Road, which is currently used by some cyclists who have to share the road with vehicular traffic going 45 to 70 mph, Huffman said.
