City engineer: ‘Stakes are high’ with Big Ditch bike trail

Wichita’s bike board has to ride an uphill road to develop a bike path along the edge of the Big Ditch, a city engineer warned Monday night.

The city would have to satisfy the Army Corps of Engineers that a trail won’t damage the west Wichita floodway, said Joe Hickle, interim stormwater engineer.

Hickle reported Monday to the Wichita Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Board, which wants to build a trail along the ditch from the Sedgwick County Zoo north to the future Crystal Lake Park in the far north part of the city.

Hickle said the city can’t just lay down a trail without risking the loss of the Corps’ certification of the Wichita-Valley Center Floodway known as the Big Ditch, which the city earned in 2013.

Loss of certification could raise flood-insurance costs for some residents, particularly in the Riverside area.

“The stakes are high if we do this wrong,” Hickle said.

Cost is another factor. Developing a path could cost about $2.5 to $3 million, Hickle said.

Board members acknowledged they don’t have that kind of money to spend, although they could request city funding or seek outside grants.

Among other potential problems Hickle identified:

▪ Erosion: The soil around the Big Ditch is sandy, so the city has to be careful to keep it covered with vegetation to keep the banks from sliding into the channel. “Keeping people off the levees is the best way to do that,” Hickle said. In addition, a hard path on the top of the levees could shed more water down the banks, contributing to erosion, he said.

▪ Liability: People might not stay on the path and climb down the levees to the water, exposing themselves to danger. “There could be a lot of liability related to that,” Hickle said.

▪ Motor vehicles: Even though the trail would be designated for bicycles and pedestrians only, there would need to be some way to keep out motorcycles and mopeds that could tear up the levees.

▪ Trash and litter: Having public access would require some measures to protect against people dumping trash along the trail.

▪ Fencing: The path would probably need to be fenced off from the ditch to satisfy Corps concerns. However, that could cause other problems by limiting the Corps’ access to perform inspections and hampering city efforts to maintain the landscaping.

Despite those potentially daunting hurdles, some members of bike-ped board said they aren’t discouraged.

“I think we all need to do some more research on it,” said board member George Theoharis. “He (Hickle) has some concerns, now we need to find out if those concerns can be hurdled.”

Board member Jerry Jones said he has ridden on trails along flood-control levees in Manhattan, Salina, Arkansas City and Lawrence.

“Our task is to find out how they did it and see if it will work in Wichita,” he said.

This story was originally published June 14, 2016 at 11:02 AM with the headline "City engineer: ‘Stakes are high’ with Big Ditch bike trail."