The mayor of Tallahassee, Florida was speaking at the Grand Opening event for the latest segment of the FAMU Way project, extending west from Wahnish Way to Pinellas Street just south of Railroad Square. If you were at the Friday, 10 June 2016, event, you'd have to agree with him. It's an attractive stretch of road, featuring landscaped medians and borders, bike lanes, a piece of the Capital Cascades Greenway Trail, a bicycle repair station, and a playground.
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| Capital Cascades Trail |
This was the second of three parts of the FAMU Way project, which includes segment three of the Capital Cascades Trail. It's also the first part of the project to actually extend FAMU Way. Before the project, FAMU Way had just been the renamed Canal Street--a narrow lane that ran along the Saint Augustine Branch. The Saint Augustine Branch may at one time have been an attractive stream, but in living memory the creek had become a drainage ditch, ugly, dangerous, and prone to flooding. Blueprint 2000's plan for the Capital Cascades Trail included parks, trails, and roads, but it was primarily a stormwater management project. The Saint Augustine Branch is now confined underground to a box culver, and FAMU Way runs above it.
"You're standing on top of these big concrete pipes," Autumn Calder of Blueprint 2000 told the people at the Grand Opening. "Big enough to drive a truck through."
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| FAMU Way |
Part two of the FAMU Way project, though, extends the road west of Wahnish Way, where Canal Street had never gone. Part three will take the road even farther, west and south to Gamble Street.
Of all the aspects of FAMU Way, I'm most impressed with the trail, and I'm not the only one. At the ribbon cutting during the grand opening, the ribbon stretched across the trail, not the roadway. When the Cascades Park Bridge over South Monroe Street is completed (not before 20 July 2016), the trail along FAMU Way will connect to Cascades Park and the rest of the Capital Cascades Trail. And when the third part of the FAMU Way project takes the trail to Gamble Street, Capital Cascades Trail will link with the Saint Marks Trail.
"A four-mile linear park right in the middle of our city," said Leon County Commission Bryan Desloge.
I'm not sure if it will be quite as far as four miles, but when Capital Cascades Trail is done, you'll be able to walk, run, or bicycle on paved, multi-use trail all the way from Leon High School to Saint Marks, Florida and the shores of the Saint Marks River--more than twenty miles. That day is coming--plans for part three of the FAMU Way project are being drawn up, and the mother of all Grand Openings can't be far behind.
Links
- More photos of the 10 June 2016 FAMU Way Grand Opening
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10107722224556933.1073742197.5215641&l=6b909afad4
- Blueprint 2000
http://blueprint2000.org/
- The first race on the FAMU Way extension will be on the Trouble Afoot! calendar
https://troubleafoot.blogspot.com/search/label/calendar?max-results=1
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