EAST ALTON - Madison County Transit (MCT) Board of Trustees and staff commemorated the completion of two Riverbend-area MCT Trails projects with ribbon cuttings on Thursday, August 31.
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New MCT Riverbend Trail
The first ribbon cutting opened a new extension of the MCT Riverbend Trail in East Alton. The 0.25-mile, 10-foot-wide asphalt extension starts at the MCT Eastgate Park & Ride facility located next to Eastgate Plaza on IL-3 in East Alton and extends to the intersection of Niagara and South Streets, where a one-block on-road connector takes trailgoers to the MCT Riverbend Trail. From here, the MCT Riverbend Trail runs south on the levee next to Wood River Creek, crosses beneath IL-3, and connects to the MCT Confluence Trail. The contractor for the Riverbend Trail extension was Stutz Excavating, and the project engineer was Oates Associates.
MCT Confluence Trail Improvements
The second MCT Trails project, which opened on Thursday, was the reconstruction of a 0.5-mile segment of the MCT Confluence Trail which runs along the Mississippi River levee from the National Great Rivers Research & Education Center on IL-143 to the MCT Wood River Creek bridge. This portion of the trail once shared a gravel access road with vehicular traffic and was prone to frequent flooding and closure. Thanks to a Bikeway Grant from the Illinois Dept. of Natural Resources, MCT has now separated this portion of the trail from the road, raised it several feet to prevent flooding, and constructed a 10-foot-wide asphalt trail. RCS Construction, Inc. was the contractor for the trail improvements and Sheppard, Morgan & Schwaab, Inc. was the project engineer.
