A missing piece of the Rillito River path is now paved and open.
While construction of the northern portion of the path on the Rillito River between Country Club Road and Hacienda Del Sol Road isn’t officially finished, it is paved and open to cyclists.
Matt Zoll, Pima County’s bicycle and pedestrian program manager, told League of American Bicyclists president Andy Clarke on Tuesday that the dirt portion of the path had been a missing link for the last 20 years.
In addition to paving the path, project manager John Spiker, created a paved connection from the path to River Road allowing cyclists to avoid the Campbell Avenue and River Road intersection.
If you do ride the new portion of the path keep an eye out for work crews who are finishing up flood control work.
Check out the video below to see what the new path looks like.
Here is a map of the stretch that has been paved.
View Rillito Projects in a larger map
Been riding on the newly paved path for over a week now and it’s smooth as butter 🙂 Glad this stretch is paved, and it’ll be interesting to see how the city deals with the dirt embankments. That could be a significant challenge, as I’ve seen quite a bit of water come over those embankments in the monsoon season.
I still have to wonder why, if the north side of River is essentially fully paved from Craycroft to La Cholla, they feel the need to pave the south side between Campbell and 1st. Seems a little redundant, and especially considering all the noise the home-owners and pedestrians have raised about that area, it probably would have been best to just focus on the north side and leave that area alone… oh well, too late!
Yahooooo!
Tell you the truth, I used to enjoy practicing my mountain biking skills on the unpaved stretch. But there are others who don’t think the same way.
Rode that on Wednesday and was pleasantly surprised that it was done. It was nice not having to cut through the Trader Joe’s parking lot to avoid crossing Campbell. The path from River to the path was a big surprise as I didn’t know that was going to be done. FYI, the entrance/exit is right there by the speed camera pole on River Road.