Scott County, Three Rivers to start trail planning

It took a while for Jean Routh to find a bikeable route from her home in Savage to nearby Prior Lake. And it's not ideal — it's a winding, 10-mile ride, including a stretch of highway where drivers fly by, horns blaring.

"Oh my gosh, it is so complicated," she said. "It's all these little residential streets winding around."

There are usable trails around the two cities, but they're fragmented. It makes it tough for users to get from point A to point B.

"They'll have these fantastic trails, and then all of a sudden it'll just stop," Routh said.

This year, Scott County, along with local cities and other stakeholders, will start figuring out how to fit these disparate trails together and create a viable system.

"We'll be piecing some segments together, but we're also going to look at where there's opportunities to create new segments," said Mark Themig, Scott County's general manager for parks and trails.

The regional trail project is part of the county's recently released 2015 parks and trails work plan, in partnership with Three Rivers Park District. The partnership's operating budget, also recently released, is $2,046,303 — a $105,819 increase over 2014. That bump comes from wage and benefit increases, as well as some added staff.

Several areas were identified as possible trail corridors during a master planning process a few years ago, with routes crisscrossing the county.

The Savage/Prior Lake area is first in line, Themig said. In addition to being highly populated, it's the site of a lot of new development that could quickly eat up potential trail space.

There's also an opportunity to join forces with Prior Lake, which owns a nearby chunk of land, Pike Lake Park, that's in the early stages of being developed for public use.

"I'm not suggesting that the trail would go through our park," said Prior Lake city administrator Frank Boyles, "but it would be close enough so that if you happened to be on a long-distance journey of some sort, you could veer off and sit around at Pike Lake Park for a little while."

A trail that now runs along County Road 21 could be diverted into the park area, Themig said. The collaboration would involve Prior Lake, the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community and the Prior Lake-Spring Lake Watershed District