Amazon, city officials should have done better than dangerous closure of Legacy Trail

It’s nice to hear that Amazon is going to make a spiffy new section of the Legacy Trail so we cyclists, walkers, runners, parents pushing strollers, skaters won’t be troubled by the enormous trucks coming and going from its ginormous facility under construction on Newtown Pike.

It would have been nicer for Amazon — and the city — to consider us a little earlier in this project, before “closed” signs sprang up on the much-used trail and we were all pushed out onto Newtown Pike with only a handful of orange cones to protect us from the traffic speeding by. Almost always some of the cones are on their sides, adding a slalom challenge to what is already a dangerous sprint that ends at an entry to the site covered in huge gravel, making it dangerous to ride and so pushing cyclists out into a lane of Newtown.

Ten or 15 years ago we might have said, “well, at least there’s a trail,” and put up with it. But, here’s the thing: In the intervening time Lexington has begun promoting itself (with reason) as a bike-friendly city to both encourage current residents to be more active and to attract those sought-after 20- and 30-somethings who value access to quality recreation infrastructure.

So, this is the thing: I know that the mega-warehouse is a huge, complex project that we hope will add to our economic vitality and I know the city people involved in signing off on the plans have an awful lot on their plates. But I can’t help but feel that the impact on the Legacy Trail was an afterthought as the project went through the permitting process. There was no advance warning, we all just cycled or walked out one morning and found it closed. The provisions for a safe alternative are minimal at best. I’m an experienced adult rider and it scares me. If I were one of the hundreds of parents I see every summer on the trail with their kids, I’d give up out of fear.

Some say people can just drive to another starting point — at Coldstream or the trailhead out by the Horse Park — but part of the beauty of the Legacy Trail is that people from Lexington’s North Side — a public recreation desert for decades — can just walk or cycle right to it, or make the short drive to the Northside Y parking lot. Many people who live downtown, myself included, rarely drive to the trailhead, preferring to cycle, burning calories rather than carbon.

And that’s finally the point. We don’t want people avoiding our trails — whether from fear or inconvenience or uncertainty about conditions — we want them to use them. And if that’s the case those walkers, cyclists, etc. need to be considered, planned for and respected at every stage of the process when projects are planned along those trails. That’s essential to creating the bike-and-walk friendly city we all say we want.

Jacalyn Carfagno is a former Herald-Leader editorial writer and an avid biker.

This story was originally published August 30, 2021 at 10:25 AM.