The trails LSU doesn't have
A new national report maps where people actually walk and bike. Four SEC campuses made the list. LSU didn't, and neither did the rest of Baton Rouge.
StreetLight, a company that tracks how people move across the country, released a report yesterday naming the most-traveled trails, paths and walking spots in every state. Louisiana got one entry: the Audubon Park Cycleway in New Orleans.
Nothing in Baton Rouge made the cut, no trails at LSU.
Why it matters: A good path gives people a safe way to get somewhere without a car. College campuses are the best candidates for paths and trails.
The details:
- Across the Southeast, StreetLight found that many of the busiest walking trails sit on college campuses or in theme parks.
- Plenty of the top biking trails follow the water. Baton Rouge has its own levee trail along the Mississippi, but not enough people ride it to register in StreetLight's numbers. In some stretches, it's crumbling, which cyclists say makes it dangerous to ride at all.
- StreetLight flagged well-used trails at five SEC schools: Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi State, Auburn and Kentucky.
- Arkansas sells its trails and paths the hardest when it courts students. It talks up 250 miles of mountain biking and hiking trails, some cutting right through campus. It points to its Bicycle Friendly University program and to its Discovery Bikeway, a set of shortcuts that let cyclists skirt the crowds during class changes.
The bigger picture: The master plans for the University Lakes and City-Brooks Park call for miles of paths for walkers and cyclists. Students already move through those areas every day, just without anything safe under their feet.
- Paths around the lakes are projected to cost $26 million. Building them falls to three partners: the LSU Real Estate and Facilities Foundation, BREC and the city-parish.
- The three are discussing creating a lakes and parks conservancy to carry out plans.
A hard truth: LSU student Leah Victoria Fonte and her fiancé Shane David Hirstius were struck by a car Sunday on Nicholson Drive, near a stretch where people walk between bars and traffic with few safe places to do it.
- It wasn't the first time. In 2019, another student was struck and killed there. The parish added some lighting and a crosswalk afterward, but never built a connected, safe way to get around.
- After these latest deaths, state, local and LSU officials quickly said they're working on road safety, pointing to a project already underway on Nicholson Drive. They are also working on interim improvements, such as reducing the speed limit from 45 miles to 35 miles per hour.
The bottom line: Baton Rouge builds a sidewalk here, a stretch of walking paths there. StreetLight's data suggests people don't use them much because the pieces don't connect.
LSU has more than 40,000 students and calls itself a walking campus, yet it has nothing like the network Arkansas uses to draw students.
The lakes and City Park efforts are a real chance to build a paths network. But some people who live near the lakes are quietly fighting the conservancy, and getting it set up, funded and running will take courage and ambition from the partners.
