May 15 is National Bike to Work Day, and many towns and cities have events planned to celebrate those who travel on two wheels.
The town of Blacksburg has spent the past few years building over 60 miles of biking trails, including a new section that opened this month.
The Huckleberry Trail is a former railroad that’s been paved between Christiansburg and Blacksburg. But until recently, there was no way to get from it to the other parks in Blacksburg, explains Dean Crane, the town’s Parks and Recreation director.
“We got the Heritage Park, which was great, but it was an island. It didn’t connect to anything,” Crane said.
“And the vision was, how do we connect town to Heritage, and Heritage to Pandapas Pond area.”
Pandapas Pond is located within the Jefferson National Forest, and part of Blacksburg’s mountain biking trail system now links to the area.
At Heritage Park, on the north side of Blacksburg, is another new, paved trail called the Meadowbrook Greenway. You can now go from the center of Blacksburg into the Jefferson National Forest almost entirely by trails that are separated from car traffic.
“Any time you can create a link that they just cross a road, instead of beyond the road, it’s safer for everybody,” Crane explained.
But building this kind of bike infrastructure takes years, and millions of dollars.
Blacksburg was able to pay for a lot of these biking and pedestrian projects after COVID-19 through money from the American Rescue Plan.
There is less money now for towns to do these types of projects. Last year, the U.S. Department of Transportation canceled many grants that would have gone to pedestrian and bike safety. Matt Hanratty is Blacksburg’s Town Manager.
“While we’re a big town, relatively speaking, for Virginia, we’re still relatively small,” Hanratty said. “So we need our partners to help build those projects. And they’re aware of that, and they’ve been great to work with. And they’re facing the same challenges of there’s limited funding dollars to go around.”
Hanratty said Blacksburg’s population is growing, and they want to keep making it safer for more people get around without driving a car.
“We have a large university in a small town,” Hanratty said. “And we’re trying to encourage alternate modes of transportation.”
Hanratty said they’re going to continue working with the money that’s available to make improvements, like better lighting and signage at crosswalks.
“So it’s not perfect, but if it’s more visible, more obvious, in theory it would help reduce conflicts, between vehicles and pedestrians, which is a concern on our town staff, our community, our town council,” Hanratty said. “It’s on everybody’s minds of wanting people to be safe.”
Many of Blacksburg’s trails have been built by and are maintained by volunteer groups, including the New River Land Trust and the Poverty Creek Trails Coalition, and the Friends of the Huckleberry Trail.
The groups have worked with the town on several parts of the trail system, including a mountain biking skills park.
“So, we have larger jumps and smaller little jumps, and rock courses,” Crane said. “And so people just kind of loop this. Do a couple loops and then they go on their ride.”
Blacksburg’s trail system is bringing in tourists, too. At one of the mountain biking trailheads, two mountain bikers from Chattanooga, Tennessee have just completed a 14-mile loop. One of them, Amy Zellers, said a friend told them about the trails here and that’s what brought them to visit.
“We were doing like the black diamonds and the amount of dirt that they put in there and the way they’ve put in the rock rolls and the gap jumps and stuff, it’s just incredible,” Zellers said. “So, we really appreciate all the work that they’ve done to these trails.”
Crane says some months 16,000 people have been recorded using this trail.
“It isn’t just for the mountain biker who wants to go flying down the mountain,” Crane said. “Sure, there’s some trails that do that. But we want beginner level things. We want things easy for the person who walks their dog.”
Crane said he hopes that as they continue to build out the trail system, more people will use it, both for exercise and as a way to travel to work and school.
