Starkville residents, contractors and public officials gathered Friday morning to hold a ribbon cutting for the 1.7-mile Lynn Lane bike and pedestrian path.
The process for conceptualizing and building the $1.2 million path has taken over 10 years, but Friday’s ceremony marked the end of the process and an opportunity to celebrate the new pedestrian “backbone” of south Starkville.
“This project all got started thanks to a community volunteer program,” Mayor Parker Wiseman said. “Starkville in Motion made the original grant. That is a point in this story that shouldn’t be missed.”
The bike and pedestrian path was funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Transportation Alternatives Program, which is administered by the Mississippi Department of Transportation. Wiseman thanked MDOT for its assistance on the project, even though the project is on a much smaller scale than the state highway projects MDOT usually works on.
Northern District Transportation Commissioner Mike Tagert was on hand for the ribbon cutting and said he was proud to see the project come to fruition in Starkville, where he lives.
Starkville in Motion President Ron Cossman said the collaboration between different entities on the bike path could serve as a model throughout the state. He noted that in 2003, Mississippi State University’s Carl Small Towns Center received a $10,000 grant to study possible community projects in Starkville.
The completion of the Lynn Lane path marks the third project born from that study that has been completed. The other two projects are sidewalks on Hospital Road and bike lanes on University Drive.
Neel Schaffer was the lead engineer and contractor on the project. Kevin Stafford and Starkville native Saunders Ramsey spoke on behalf of the firm. Ramsey said the Lynn Lane bike path was one of the first projects he worked on when he moved back to Starkville in 2011. When he first heard about the project, he was excited to hear conversations about multimodal transportation taking place.
“It’s not just asphalt and concrete,” Ramsey said. “We’ve impacted people’s lives in a positive way.”
In January, Oktibbeha County applied for a TAP grant to extend the Lynn Lane bike from its end on South Montgomery Street to Blackjack Road and connect with the MSU campus. The county, city of Starkville and MSU agreed to split the cost of the grant match three ways. The county will find out in April if the grant will be awarded.
Starkville in Motion is organizing a “Walk and Roll” event on April 30th, during which community members will be invited to participate in a group walk down the Lynn Lane bike path.