BIKE TRAIL RUNS INTO SNAG; ERRY SAFETY CONCERNS EXPRESSED

Last November, the Lower Mississippi Delta Development Center announced the formation of the Mississippi River Trail, a bicycle route that would extend 2,000 miles from Ste. Genevieve to New Orleans.

Tourism officials drooled at the thought of tourists from all over the world riding through Missouri. But safety questions raised by government officials and lumber companies in Perry County have put the fate of the Missouri portion of the trail in doubt.

If a route through Perry County can't be worked out, it would effectively eliminate the trail north of Cape Girardeau. With Illinois moving forward on a parallel trail, "if we scrap the route north of Cape Girardeau, we won't get anybody coming into Missouri," said Laurie Stout of the Missouri Division of Tourism, because crossing the Mississippi River Bridge at Cape Girardeau is so dangerous.

At a meeting in Perryville March 12, Perry County Presiding Commissioner Karl Klaus said he supported the idea of the trail, "but we have some concerns about safety."

The original plan called for the route to take U.S. Highway 61 south from Ste. Genevieve to Highway H at St. Mary. It would take Highway H to Missouri Route 51 and jog over to Route C, take Route C to Highway 61 near Pocahontas, Highway 61 to Highway 177 in Cape Girardeau County to Route V to avoid the Procter & Gamble plant, to Missouri Route 177 near Trail of Tears State Park and into Cape Girardeau.

Tom Tucker, executive director of the Southeast Missouri Regional Planning and Economic Development Commission, was at the meeting. He said that logging and coal trucks speed down Highways C and H, roads with no shoulders.

"Where are the trucks and the bicycles going to pass?" Tucker said. "There's no place for bicycles to go because there's no shoulder, only ditches."

Tucker said local officials are "concerned about people getting killed. They'd like to see the trail but would like to see it moved over to (Highway) 61."

Routes H and C are more scenic, Tucker said, "but I guarantee you that when I drive down them I watch the roads."

Stout, an avid bicyclist, said she has ridden those roads three times without problems. "If (Route) C really gets hundreds of trucks, it would be dangerous," she said. But she said she didn't see that much traffic.

Experienced bicyclists can handle two-lane roads without shoulders with occasional trucks, she said, better than they can handle the busier Highway 61, which has only gravel shoulders for long stretches. Nearly everyone attempting to ride the 2,000-mile route would be experienced, Stout said.

Stout and Tucker agree that the trail, if safe, would be good for the economy of the region. Both said they are committed to working out an agreement.

Stout worries that delays would hurt the Missouri side of the trail. Already, bicyclists touring the Mississippi Valley know that there is no safe route from St. Louis to Ste. Genevieve on the Missouri side of the river, she said.

When the route is developed, the state would erect signs marking it to make it easy to follow.

"Illinois has developed a route on their side of the river," she said. "But right now it's in limbo" on the Missouri side.