Greenway Trail is getting bigger this year — with more on the way

By Patrick Lalley, for Pigeon605

A long-awaited extension of the Sioux Falls Greenway Trail will be built this year.

The spur will connect Legacy Park on West 12th Street with Family Park near Ellis Road. The addition has been on the city’s to-do list for more than a decade but was delayed over funding issues.

The trail also will connect to nearby neighborhoods via Songbird Street.

“If everything goes right … we’ll have it opened up by November,” said Tory Miedema, park development specialist.

The challenge is a pandemic-induced shortage of building materials. The route pops out from under the 12th Street bridge over Skunk Creek and requires two bridges to get to Family Park.

Eventually, the trail will snake north to the USD Community College for Sioux Falls and USD Discovery District, Jefferson High School and Southeast Technical College. That will create a nearly northwest bypass that will connect on both ends to the main loop.

Those additions, plus the push in the northeast to Great Bear Ski Valley will push the city’s network of paved recreational trail to nearly 50 miles.

That milestone is still a few years down the road, however.

The Family Park extension covering 1.5 miles is this year’s addition. A 1-mile extension from Lien Park on North Cliff Avenue to Bahnson Avenue, which is big step toward Great Bear, is scheduled for 2023.

The rest of the Cherry Creek section is nearly 7 miles. The full stretch to Great Bear will be at least 1.5 miles.

Funding is always an issue when discussing timelines. But one of the biggest hurdles of bike trail expansion is getting access to land, Miedema said.

“That’s always the toughest thing,” he said.

The Lien Park extension was opened up through the purchase of 22 acres along the Big Sioux River last year.

“That’s going to be one of the coolest sections of the bike trail,” Miedema said. “A good chunk of that section is going to be like a boardwalk.”

Total paved mileage of the trail is about 34 today, with the core loop of about 19 miles.

In addition to the new bits of trail, a reconstruction of the path through Falls Park should be finished by mid-June, maybe earlier.

There are bike-centric cities in the country that boast a couple of hundred miles. But that’s not always the best comparison because many of those miles are on-street lanes or glorified sidewalks.

The charm and strength of the Sioux Falls system, because of the geography of the River Greenway, is that riders never have to cross a street.

“It’s so safe, and you almost disappear from the city,” Miedema said.