Gulf Shores, Ala. – (OBA) – In just under two months, new counters installed by Gulf State Park on the Backcountry Trail revealing more than 153,000 people utilized the trails.

And, that was just for six trailheads located in Gulf Shores at The Lodge Crossing, Park Headquarters, Gulf Oak Ridge, Coyote Crossing, Campground Road and the Beach Pavilion Crossover on beach road. City Planner Andy pointed out the traffic volume during a presentation to the city council on National Bike Month. Those numbers were just from Feb. 1 to March 27 for an average of 2,864 daily.

During his presentation, Bauer talked about the many bicycle amenities and facilities available and talked about three others that will further improve access for cyclists.

The most popular of the Bike Month events is the annual “Ride to School Day” for students in the city. This year the ride will be on May 3.

“We’ve been hosting this event for a number of years and we typically have about 100 to 120 mostly elementary kids and their parents,” Bauer said. “The ride begins at Sims Park and we go over to Meyer Park where we pick up a lot more kids and finally the school. We have a return ride after school.”

All are welcome to participate.

“It’s open to anyone regardless if you have kids or not,” Bauer said. “It’s a great event and a lot of fun to see all the little kids out there riding their bikes.”

Two new amenities coming to the Waterway Village District are under construction or expected to begin before the year’s out.

A project is currently under construction to extend Waterway East Boulevard approximately two miles to the east and north to connect to Cotton Creek Drive. Included will be 14-foot multi-use trails and also bike lanes on both sides of the road. Completion of this extension is expected by December of 2025.

“This will be a great enhancement,” Bauer said. “It will connect the Highway 59 area up to Cotton Creek Drive which already has bike lanes on that roadway.”

Also, in the district, a bridge is planned from East Second Street over the Intracoastal Waterway for a safe north-south connection for walkers and cyclists.

“One that’s really exciting to me is the pedestrian bridge,” Bauer said. “Currently, there is no safe way to cross Highway 59 north to south or vice versa without having to cross the bridge which is very dangerous.”

Building of the pedestrian bridge is expected to start in 2023 with a target completion date in 2026. It will also be a 14-foot multi-use trail.

“It will allow people to go north over the bridge to LuLu’s and some of the city’s other amenities and facilities north of the bridge,” Bauer said. “It would also allow other residents that we have in the burgeoning north area of the city to come to the south area and visit the beaches and whatever else they want to do south of the waterway.”

A final improvement of the three is the extension of the Fort Morgan Trail which currently dead ends at the Peninsula residential community. This is a project funded by the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

“Construction should begin later this year and extend the trail 14.5 miles all the way down to the west to the fort,” Bauer said. “That will consist of a 10- to 12-foot multi-use trail, mostly asphalt. There will be some areas where it has to go over wetlands so it’ll be boardwalks. About midway, it will include a parking area with bathrooms.”

Bauer hopes the improvements will help the city improve its rating with the League of American Bicyclists.

“We applied for and received Bronze Level bicycle-friendly community status in 2018,” Bauer said. “We reapplied in 2020 and once again recertified as a bronze-level community. The ratings system from the league goes from bronze up to platinum. The next deadline is in August and we again will reapply and our hopes are to achieve either silver or gold status. I believe we’ll have a pretty good opportunity even though it is a rigorous application process.”

Bauer said Gulf Shores is only one of two communities in Alabama with the bicycle-friendly label and there are more than 50 miles of bike lanes and trails connecting the city with the park and Orange Beach.

Citing other bicycle amenities, Bauer also pointed out two bike barns on the campuses of the elementary and middle school. There are 30 at the elementary school where fifth-graders ride bikes each Thursday for the day’s science lesson.

At the middle school, that barn has 60 bicycles that are used for the Science by the Shore program, afterschool and summer programs, athletic programs and the Gulf Coast Center for Ecotourism and Sustainability. The school also has a monthly “bike with the principal” day.

Gulf State Park has a bike-share program with 50 bikes available for free for three hours of use. In 2022 they were used 30,291 times and the bikes are available throughout the park.

Another new bicycle feature in Gulf Shores, Bauer said, was the bicycle valet at the 2022 National Shrimp Festival where volunteers watch the bikes while the riders enjoy the festival. There were 555 parked in the area in the valet’s first year at the four-day festival.

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