The McKinley Bridge, which is part of an old Route 66 alignment that connects Venice, Ill., to St. Louis, opened to bicycle and pedestrian traffic on Saturday, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
More details:
The bikeway is the newest addition to a 600-mile network of recreational paths the Great Rivers Greenway District calls the River Ring.
The bikeway is a converted railroad trestle that starts at the Riverfront Trail and Branch Street in St. Louis and curves up toward the bridge. A concrete barrier separates the 14-foot-wide bike lane from the road. The bikeway descends to green space at the base of the bridge’s east end in Venice.
The $12 million bikeway is a collaboration of the Great Rivers Greenway District, the Missouri and Illinois transportation departments, the Metro public transportation agency, St. Louis and the Metro East Park and Recreation District.
The cool part is that you can bicycle over the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, also an old alignment of Route 66, pedal south down the St. Louis riverfront and go over the McKinley Bridge. More information about the McKinley Bridge is here.
The McKinley Bridge, built in 1910, deteriorated badly enough that it was closed to all traffic in 2001. After about $52 million in rehab, it was reopened to traffic in December 2007.
Even though it was expensive, local governments were motivated to reopen the bridge because the St. Louis region needs as many routes across the Mississippi River as possible. Anyone who’s been stuck in traffic near the riverfront can attest to this.
You can make a round trip of it. You can bike down the Riverfront Trail to the McKinley Bridge and cross the bridge into Illinois. Plans are in the works for an extension of the Confluence Trail, but for the time being, you can use the wide shoulder of Illinois Route 3 to bike from the McKinley Bridge to 20th Street in Granite City. From there, you can bike on the Confluence Trail up to the old Chain of Rocks Canal bridge (still open to traffic, but it’s not heavily traveled), cross that bridge and take the road to the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge.