Turner wants 10-foot-wide bike trail from Theodosia Marina to Lutie School if infrastructure funds become available
Times photo/Jenny Yarger Presiding Commissioner John Turner has proposed a 10-foot bike trail on the side of Highway 160 between Theodosia Marina Resort and Lutie School to be paid for with funds from the anticipated federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, if passed.
Ozark County Presiding Commissioner John Turner said that during the Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC) meeting he attended recently, the group began making a list of “multimodal” transportation ideas within TAC’s seven-county area, which includes Ozark County. It is thought that the projects could potentially be funded by the massive federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a $1.2 trillion bill that has passed the U.S. Senate and is now up for debate in the House.
“The new act in Congress they have for infrastructure, they’re going to give a lot of money for transportation. We did a multimodal list, so these are things that are not roads and bridges but instead are things like walking trails and other things like that,” Turner said.
The group made a list of various project ideas within the seven counties and then scored the projects from most important to be funded to least important.
“The number one item was in Wright County for safety improvements to their TransAmerica bike route. Number two was in Oregon County, [creating] sidewalks in Alton on the east side of P. Texas County was number three for constructing a spur [roadway]…for economic development. In the number four slot, I got a project for Theodosia … a 10-foot-wide bike path from Bull Shoals Lake at Theodosia Marina to the Lutie School campus.”
Turner said he thinks the project would be reasonably easy to do since Highway 160 is fairly wide in that area already.
“You’d just have to put down a little base rock and pave it,” he said.
Turner said the list will be used as the TAC’s suggestions for how funds may be used in this area if the bill passes and funds become available.
“It’s just kind of a wish list of what we could use it for,” he said.
Turner added that he’d also like to see some funding for the Ozark County Wellness Committee’s trail system that is currently under construction at the Hoerman Memorial Park in Gainesville and near the school’s track.