It seemed pretty straightforward: Build a mountain bike trail system that loops all the way around Fellows Lake.
But the trail builders hit a snag on the lake's south side. Boggy soil and a narrow property line corridor nixed the plan for a wooden boardwalk to get bikers around one long finger of the lake.
Without that connection, the trail would stop at one side of the lake and pick up on the other side, with no way to ride all the way through.
The potential solution? A 1,000-foot long cable suspension bridge over the lake that, if built, would be the longest pedestrian/bike suspension bridge in the country.
“It would be 10-feet wide, which allows two-way traffic,” said Jessica Pearson, executive director of TrailSpring, the nonprofit organization that's building the 30-mile mountain bike trail system around Fellows Lake. “It has been conceptually designed for the purpose of soliciting funds.”
Such a long suspension bridge wouldn't be cheap, with an estimated cost of about $2 million. That's more than the entire Dirt 66 bike trail system cost at Fellows Lake, which came in at $1.8 million.
But neither Pearson nor bike trail partner Springfield City Utilities appear to be deterred by the suspension bridge cost. It's just a matter of finding sources of money or donations that could pay for it. City Utilities owns Fellows Lake, a key drinking water source for Springfield, and the land around the lake where the bike trail is being built.
Without bridge funding in hand, Pearson acknowledged it could not be constructed by the May 2022 finish date for the bike trail system. Pearson said TrailSpring could use about $200,000 intended for the boardwalk to help fund the suspension bridge. And CU spokesman Joel Alexander said the utility company is working with TrailSpring to help find a solution.
“We're in the early stages of what it would take to accomplish getting a bridge in that area,” Alexander said in an email. “The elevation in the southeast corner has some wetland concerns and the possibility of a suspension bridge would work around those concerns.
“It really is in the preliminary phases of discussion,” he added. “That said, we hope to meet with state officials in the coming weeks to discuss possible funding for the project.”
If money can be found to build it, the 1,000-foot Dirt 66 suspension bridge would be more than 300 feet longer than the SkyBridge in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, which is 680 feet long. The SkyBridge currently holds the title of the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in the country.
The Arouca Bridge in northern Portugal is the world's longest pedestrian cable suspension bridge, at 1,700 feet.
