Katy bike trail protected as Missouri saves old railroad bridge

An 80-year-old railroad bridge that served as a missing link on the 225-mile Katy Trail across Missouri will be preserved for use by future pedestrians and bicycle travelers.

The bridge over the Missouri River at Boonville has been at the center of a debate for some 5 years. The owner of the 400-foot-long steel lift span, the Union Pacific, wanted to dismantle it and use it to build a bridge for trains crossing the Osage River.

Trail supporters — such as Save the Katy Bridge coalition, BikeMoFed, and the Rails to Trails Conservancy — said dismantling the bridge would not only remove an historic structure as part of the Katy Trail, but also threaten the “railbanked” status of the trail because of the broken segment.

Bridge saved

Last Friday, however, Gov. Jay Nixon announced the state had brokered a deal for Union Pacific to give the bridge to the city of Boonville in return for Missouri allocating $23 million in federal stimulus funds to go toward building the new bridge over the Osage River.

Indirectly, I think we can chalk up another use of stimulus funds for bicycle facilities.

Bicycle travelers traversing Missouri on the Katy Trail presently cross the Missouri at Boonville on US Route 40. Plans call for retrofiting the railroad bridge and re-establishing its connections to the Katy Trail on both sides.

Tourism

That bridge can expect a lot of traffic. The state estimates that 300,000 people annually use the trail, which runs from St. Charles in the east to Clinton, in the west.

Originally the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (Katy) Railroad, the railway was sold to Union Pacific in the late 1980s. The UP announced plans to abandon it, and bicycle and trail advocates worked out a rail to trail conversion.

It has since become the longest rail-trail in the US. Restaurants, inns and campgrounds catering to bicycle travelers have sprung up in small towns along the trail, helping to spark the tourism economy.

See maps, photos and lodging information about the Katy Trail at BikeKatyTrail.com. If I ever get back to Missouri on my bicycle, I definitely want to scratch the gravel on this trail.

Photo from Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT) bridge on Wikipedia.