Reply to Rock Island incorporated into BikeKatyTrail.com

I've been updating BikeKatyTrail.com to fully include Rock Island Trail info (or "Rock Island Spur" if you prefer). Please let me know if anything seems incorrect, incomplete, or if any website features are not working right.

- Added Rock Island map at the top of all pages with buttons/links to switch between the KT and RIT maps (it would have been too cramped and messy to include both trails with town names on a single map).

- Included Rock Island towns in Mileage Chart.

- Included Rock Island towns in "Towns and Services" page.

- Added Rock Island towns to the Trip Planner, and made the planner smart enough to calculate distances correctly if you switch trails (for example, if you start at Pleasant Hill on the RIT and finish at Clinton on the KT).

- Added the Rock Island Trail, in a contrasting color, to the interactive map page and to maps on town pages and business pages.

- Included all businesses and services that I know of between Windsor and Pleasant Hill

- And of course "RIT" stickers are available for purchase on the merchandise page. :-)

Thank you to all who have been on the new trail and shared info here. I'm glad you've had a chance to enjoy it, and look forward to getting out there myself in the spring.

Happy trails... and happy new year!

Ray,
Thank you for all of your hard work.

There is a website for the Rock Island Trail State Park that you've made too? It doesn't have any Katy Trail information on it. It's all for the RIT. Will it soon have Katy info on it? Or do you plan to delete it and keep all of the Missouri trail information here.

It's a bit confusing to me to have these two trails blended together here. If I were looking for RIT information I wouldn't look on a website for a different trail to find it.

Anon, thank you for the feedback. Yes I agree it really is redundant to have Rock Island info both here and on the BikeRockIsland.com website. But there are two reasons why I added Rock Island to BikeKatyTrail.com:

1. Most of us still think of the Rock Island Trail as a separate trail. BUT the state of Missouri is now calling it "the Rock Island Spur of the Katy Trail" - in other words, it's part of the Katy Trail. So for completeness, this spur of the Katy Trail should be included on the Katy Trail website.

2. More importantly, this will make it easier for people using both trails, especially for planning multi-day trips.

For example, you might want to see all the town distances between Pleasant Hill on the Rock Island and Clinton on the Katy, e.g. how far is it from Chilhowee to Calhoun.

Or you might want to plan a multi-day ride from Pleasant Hill to Sedalia and back - you should be able to see a list of services along that whole route, without needing to create two lists from two different websites.

I expect that a lot of people - especially from the Kansas City area - will use the Rock Island as a gateway to the Katy Trail, and they do not want to have to jump back and forth between two websites when planning their trips.

My goal was to make the Rock Island info easy to find and blend in with Katy Trail info, without getting in the way of the original Katy info.

Having said all that, I will keep BikeRockIsland.com running and updated for people who don't have an interest in the main section of the Katy Trail. I'll keep an eye on the website traffic to see whether people are really using it.

Again, I appreciate your input. Happy trails!

I think of the Rock Island Trail State Park as a separate trail and I think of the spur to Pleasant Hill as a spur of the RITSP.

In their announcement for the opening of the spur, DNR speaks of the spur and of the RITSP;

Dedication Ceremony

12/10/2016 | Rock Island Spur

Join us in opening the 47.5 mile extension of the Katy Trail along Rock Island Trail State Park. A dedication ceremony will take place at the trailhead in Pleasant Hill.

Help us celebrate this important extension of the Katy Trail and honor those who have helped to make it possible.

Who said the whole thing was now the Rock Island Spur of the Katy Trail?

Check out this Kansas City Star article from 12/13/2016, regarding the "spur of the Katy Trail" designation:

http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article120656018.html

I don't get it either, I'm guessing maybe they are calling it part of the KT for budgetary reasons or something like that.

Good article. They decided to call the section from Windsor to Pleasant Hill the Rock Island Spur of the Katy Trail. Makes sense.

The article also says: As for Rock Island Trail State Park, don’t write the name off just yet. The state hopes to construct a trail on the 144 miles of inactive Rock Island Railroad corridor east of Windsor..

My guess is when the Rock Island Trail State Part is completed, it will be called the Rock Island Trail State Park.

Time will tell.

I wonder if it's all about braggin' rights. The Katy Trail used to be the longest rails-to-trails project in the country at 238 miles. That was eclipsed by the John Wayne Pioneer Trail in Washington state at 253 miles (or 300 miles, depending on the source), a few years ago.

The KT + RI spur is ~285 miles (we're #1 again!). But wait. Since half the John Wayne Trail is so rarely used, there are legislative efforts to close 130 miles of it. So that trail may be in flux for a while.

Now for tourism purposes, it would be nice to advertise the KT-RIT network as one trail, or at least one trail system at >400 miles. This attracts attention from people around the world. I have met Australians, Germans and British folk on the Katy and their reason for doing it was because it is the longest trail in America. To make this come true, the naming/signage must be consistent, but especially the services. Hopefully, the RIT towns will meet or exceed what we've come to appreciate from the KT towns.

BikerBoy,

I've been saying that all along too. All about braggin' rights. I would rather they keep them totally separate. Two different identities. They were two seperate railroad lines weren't they?