New North Omaha Bike Trail Hopes to Bring Car-Free Transportation Access
By Elle Love
Map of the Beltline Trail from the Intersection of Hamilton and Military to the Field Club Trailhead. Image Credit: From Emerging Terrain and Natural Resource District
North Omaha is getting a new bike/pedestrian trail brought to life through an agreement between the City of Omaha, Omaha Municipal Land Bank, and the Natural Resource District (NRD). The Beltline Trail will begin at the intersection of Hamilton Street and Military Avenue and terminate at 31st and Sprague Street.
Interior of the Craddock Bicycle Shop at 5201 North 30th Street. Image credit: From the KMTV/Bostwick-Frohardt Photograph Collection, permanently housed at The Durham Museum
The Natural Resource District and RDG Planning and Design held a public meeting on May 20 at 4 p.m. at the Venue inside Highlander taking the pulse of the community, their opinions about, and ideas for the trail.
The trail will be connected to nearby Omaha Public Schools including Walnut Hill Elementary, King Elementary School, and other community fixtures like the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation, Omaha Permaculture, the North Omaha Transit Center, and City Sprouts community garden. The Beltline Trail would also join the City Trail System along Paxton Boulevard which connects to Fontenelle Park, and the North Omaha Trail which is currently being designed by the Omaha Planning Department.
The trail is getting its name from a rail line that once ran through North Omaha, the “Belt Line”. Omaha historian, Adam Fletcher Sasse describes it as “a 15-mile long railroad that went around what were Omaha’s outskirts in 1885.”
Visit northomahahistory.com to read more of Adam Fletcher Sasse’s extensive research on the original Belt Line.
As Fletcher Sasse explains, the Belt Line carried passengers as well as cargo from North and Central Omaha, to the downtown stations from where goods could be sent out across the U.S. When the rail line was abandoned in the 1980s, an unused seam of space was left behind throughout the neighborhoods it once supported.
A streetcar from one of the main stops along the Belt Line, the Webster Street Station (North 15th and Webster Street). Other depots included the Lake Street Depot (North 40th and Lake Street) and the Walnut Hill Depot (Military Avenue and Hamilton Street).
When meeting with the initial stakeholders, Lead Architectural Intern of RDG Planning and Design, Kene Okigbo, and his team listened to feedback about connecting the trail to nearby OPS schools for students to travel safely to school and about incorporating local cultural and historic elements along the trail.
“We want to make sure that these potential routes to schools are safe routes,” said Okigbo emphasizing the importance of the “feedback of our community.”
Okigbo said his design team (RDG) responded to the Request for Proposal (RFP) put out by the Natural Resource District on the ideal layout of the trail along the former railroad known as the Omaha Beltline, where there were plans for the development of an “active transportation corridor”. Okigbo explained that the trail plan has been given a “green grade” for bikers to have easier rides as they peddle. This is because the degree at which the trail climbs up a hill is gentle compared many streets in the city. .Further explaining the gradation of the trail Okigbo says that bikers won't even “feel” the hills as they ride. “I live a mile away from our office and it’s all uphill one way, and with this new trail, you’ll never feel those.”
Okigbo said that the trail starting at the intersection of Military and Hamilton Streets and continuing to the North Omaha Transit Center will increase safe access to multimodal transportation.
North Omaha Rail yard circa 1924. Image credit: From the KMTV/Bostwick-Frohardt Photograph Collection, permanently housed at The Durham Museum
“If an individual doesn’t own a vehicle, which is a huge expense, making sure that they have access to transit, whether they are walking to it and using transit to get to wherever or if they are biking there and they are mounting their bike to the infrastructure that we are already paid for in our transit funds, it seems like a clear direction for both uses,” Okigbo said. “It’s a huge opportunity for the area to get more accessibility and to improve the quality of life for the people in the area,” Okigbo said.