Innovative Trail Design: Context-Sensitive Solutions on the Pinellas Trail

In many urban environments, there are significant barriers which must be overcome to incorporated bicycling and walking into roadway construction, or reconstruction, projects. This paper details two very different Contexts Sensitive Solutions applied to two projects, through two different communities, along the Pinellas Trail in Pinellas County, Florida. The Pinellas trail is a 34-mile shared use path that traverses the length of Pinellas County, Florida’s most densely populated county. The first of these projects is through Clearwater and includes the re-design of an existing section of the trail wherein the trail is to be relocated from a sidewalk to within five feet of an active rail line that currently runs down the middle of the adjacent roadway. The other is an extension to the trail through the central business district of St. Petersburg, along a busy one-way urban roadway with numerous driveways and on-street parking stalls. In each case, special care has been taken to safely accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians using the trail within the constraints presented by the unique context of each area. This paper describes the innovative design measures that will improve trail user safety and make the trail a more desirable facility to use without adversely impacting adjacent land uses and transportation modes.