NEWS

ABC Trails: Comprehensive Active Transportation Plan Adopted for Allen, Bourbon, and Crawford Counties

February 21, 2019

On February 12th, county commissioners and community members from Allen, Bourbon, and Crawford Counties united in Fort Scott to celebrate the adoption of the ABC Trails Plan, which provides a roadmap for future development of trails and routes in the region.

The plan was funded by the Sunflower Foundation, and developed in a partnership between Thrive Allen County, The Healthy Bourbon County Action Team, and Live Well Crawford County, that began through the Blue Cross Blue Shield Pathways to a Healthy Kansas initiative. This is the first time that three rural Kansas counties have cooperated on an active transportation plan. We hope that it can serve as a model and an inspiration for other rural counties and regions.

It is called the “ABC Trails Plan” not only because it applies to Allen, Bourbon, and Crawford Counties, but because, just as learning their ABC’s is a basic building block of a child’s educational journey, this plan is a basic building block in the journey towards an active population, a robust and diversified economy, and a sustainable Culture of Health.

At Thrive Allen County, we believe that trails are a critical economic development strategy. We know that trails provide a place for people to be active, to connect with nature, and to connect with each other. But we also know that trails can help us to attract and retain businesses and residents, as well as bring visitors to our communities. A recent report said that rural counties with a strong recreation economy gained population during this decade, while those without lost population. We don’t tend to think of southeast Kansas as a tourism or recreation destination. But that is in the process of changing, and trails are a big reason why.

Individually, Allen, Bourbon, and Crawford counties have been working on trails and routes for years, with good results, but mostly, each county has concentrated on its own communities, and not much thought has been given to how we can connect with each other, and how we can work together as a region. That is what the ABC Trails Plan aims to do. The plan lays out a number of short-term and long-term projects that build on our existing trails, add to them, and connect them to the larger state and national trail and route network. It envisions our region as a trails tourism and recreation destination.

We want to build on the nearly 40 miles of trails and routes added in the past decade — including the Prairie Spirit Trail, the Southwind Rail Trail, and the Lehigh Portland Trails — and the numerous trails and routes in Bourbon and Crawford counties. The ABC Trails Plan envisions a number of short-term and long-term active transportation projects in Allen, Bourbon, and Crawford Counties, including bicycle routes, rail-trails, singletrack, bicycle touring routes, and bikepacking routes, as well as a comprehensive regional active tourism marketing effort.