STLPR0%
Metro East cyclists get new bridge, longer trail to explore in St. Clair, Madison counties 12%
By Will Bauer0%
6/26/2026, 10:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 16 faulty reasoning types, including False Dilemma, Overconfidence Bias, and Halo Effect, with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 18.1% saturation with 114 hits. Analysis detected 584 faulty-reasoning hits from 629 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 28.7% and a BS Rank of 12% (18,137 of 20,408 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 88.90% of the article peer group.
Enthusiasts of paved trails in the Metro East will have two new options to explore on their bike rides, runs or walks in Madison and St.
Clair counties this week.
Madison County Transit unveiled a 640-foot pedestrian and bicycle bridge over Illinois Route 111 in Pontoon Beach on Thursday.
The $6.3 million bridge will allow users of MCT’s Schoolhouse Trail to avoid crossing the state highway on the northeast corner of Horseshoe Lake.
Madison County Transit Managing Director SJ Morrison said the new bridge means MCT now has 51 bridges and 22 tunnels to keep trail users from crossing busy roadways.
“This represents the 73rd structure on the MCT trails that safely carries trail goers over creeks and roads and streets and other obstacles that would either slow or stop the seamless accessibility of the trails for trail users of all ages and all abilities,” Morrison said.
MCT has prioritized replacing what are known as “at-grade crossings” that travel directly across a roadway based on traffic, starting with the highest.
Users don’t want to “play Frogger with their families.”
If the MCT system, which spans 12 trails and 138 miles, wants to be considered one of the best bikeways in the Midwest, it will need<b> </b>to continue phasing out those crossings, Morrison said.
“If you are having to stop at every intersection to cross a highway, or an interstate in some cases, it's not going to work,” Morrison said.
“We're never going to get that traction that we want in order to change the culture of a place.”
Construction on the bridge took about a year, and MCT received a $300,000 grant from the Metro East Parks and Recreation District.
St.
Clair County Transit District recently completed a 4.5-mile extension of its bike trail from near Scott Air Force Base to just shy of MidAmerica St.
Louis Airport.
It runs parallel to the MetroLink rail line.
The $6 million extension now stretches the MetroBikeLink Trail to nearly 20 miles, running from the MetroLink station in Fairview Heights to near a future MetroLink station at MidAmerica.
“For people that like to really kind of crank it up and go at little higher speeds without having to stop at crossings along the way at other roads, this is pretty much a very open stretch, where people can power it up,” said St.
Clair County Transit District Managing Director Ken Sharkey.
The latest addition to the bike trail is more rural and provides a great opportunity to see wildlife in the Silver Creek Wetland Area, Sharkey said.
“It's just a little bit different than other sections,” he said. “it's more wide open — got a couple of challenging hills.”
The second phase includes a 2.4-mile extension of the frontage road where MidAmerica is located.
Expected to be complete in a couple of weeks, Airport Boulevard will run from the terminal to the Reider Road exit just off Interstate 64, Sharkey said.
“It's really a long frontage road, and it's going to be a lot of opportunity for businesses to locate that'll create a new tax base for St.
Clair County,” he said.
The new addition to the bike trail will leave users about 0.8 miles short of the terminal.
Eventually, St.
Clair County would like to build it out to the airport.
The third phase will be the extension of MetroLink’s rail track to MidAmerica.
While St.
Clair County finished construction a couple of months ago, Metro is currently testing the track to make sure it’s safe.
It’s expected to be open to the public by September, Sharkey said.
St.
Clair County officials will host a ribbon cutting for the new bike trail at 9 a.m.
Saturday.
Speakers
2speakers50%attributed speech313writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Selected voice
82%flagged-word coverageSJ Morrison
153 attributed words48% of attributed speech55% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.