Student senate paves the way for Toledo bike initiative

Student Government is calling on the University of Toledo to pave a mile-long section of a new bicycle trail as part of a resolution during their first session of the new year.

SG Vice President Ali Eltatawy proposed a resolution that would urge the university to pave a mile of the Chessie Circle Trail near the engineering campus. The paving would be paid for with university money.

“Basically, this is the idea of having all of the bicycle routes throughout the city that can make Toledo a more accessible place and the University of Toledo is going to be a big part of that,” Eltatawy said.

The Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Government proposed the original city-wide bike path initiative. The resolution itself said the state of Ohio, the city of Toledo and the University of Toledo have each made their own commitments to “the expansion of park trails and bicycle accessibility within the community.”

The Chessie Circle Trail is a 6-mile bicycle path that would stretch from Bancroft to Bowman Park. According to Eltatawy, the Chessie Circle Trail runs all the way from Wood County and Rossford, through the Perrysburg area, and extends into upper Toledo, the Temperance junction and the northeast side of Toledo.

“We want the University of Toledo to make an actually written commitment that they want to extend the bike trail and that they are fully invested with the city of Toledo’s plan to extend the bike trails and make Toledo in general more accessible to everyone, including our University of Toledo students,” Eltatawy said.

Eltatawy’s presentation of the resolution was met with only two questions by SG senators: timetable and cost. He said he hopes for the university to have their section paved by the fall, and that TMACOG plans to have their sections paved by either the fall of 2015 or the spring of 2016.

Eltatawy said that though he has a general timeline for the project, he did not have an estimate.

“I really don’t know, to be honest,” Eltatawy said, adding that the cost was not expected to be excessive.

“From what I was led to believe by TMACOG, it, again, is more of a symbolic gesture rather than a large financial endeavor by the University of Toledo,” Eltatawy said.

After being met with no debate, the resolution passed unanimously, and Eltatawy said he plans for SG to act on it immediately.

“We can take it to Kaye Patten Wallace’s office, we can take it to President Nagi, we can take it to the UT foundation, and say explicitly we have student support for this initiative; where can we get the monetary funds to make this happen? Who do we need to talk to about the infrastructure of it?”

SG President Clayton Notestine said the issue is of interest to a significant portion of the student body.

“You can see from the green fund and other initiatives on campus that there is a huge push for green and proactive activity involved with developing UT, so I think there is a good population who may well be interested in this,” Notestine said. “But this legislation is the first step; it is by no means the last one.”