And so, from the Motown, we look
a few blocks west to a place where the
new growth of a more forward thinking
and optimistic Detroit is already begin-
ning to bear fruit. It is there, at the site of
the Detroit Dry Docks—where a young
Henry Ford served his apprenticeship—
that the Dequindre Cut rail-trail and the
Detroit RiverWalk converge.
The man in the diner so amazed at
the Detroit he observed was Eric Oberg,
RTC’s manager of trail development in
the Midwest. What impressed him and
the group of active-transportation profes-
sionals that took in the wide and empty
expanses of Jefferson Avenue was the space.
A metropolis built by the production of,
and as a monument to, the motor car,
the streets of Detroit anticipated only the
continued growth of its idol. The cars have
largely disappeared, but the roads remain.
What Oberg and his peers saw in these
abandoned avenues were miles and miles of
fantastic potential, the underutilized space
custom built to accommodate other forms
of transportation and bolster the growing
culture of biking and walking that promises
to upend the bankruptcy and foreclosures
as the real story of today’s Detroit.
“
The city is looking for a new iden-
tity,” Oberg says. “They look at walking,
biking and trails as ways to revitalize their
communities and put a fresh face on this
vintage American city.”
The metamorphosis of the Rust Belt
centers has become America’s latest genu-
ine epoch, like the rush to the West in the
19
th century or the spread of American
suburbia in the 1950s and 60s. Among
the traits of this resurgence, the diminish-
ing role of the motor car in favor of walk-
able and bikeable neighborhoods is per-
haps the most enduring. In Detroit, the
Dequindre Cut, the Detroit RiverWalk
and the Conner Creek Greenway, three
still-expanding sections of an envisioned
trail network, are perhaps the most her-
alded public responses to this shift.
The Dequindre Cut is a beautiful
example of the great potential of urban
rail-trails. In the 1920s, the Grand Trunk
Railroad carved a trench 25 feet below
the busy street for their trains serving the
Detroit waterfront. By the mid-1980s,
the corridor sat vacant, trash and weeds
replacing the fruitful passage of humans
and goods. The only traffic of any note
was usually illicit.
Today, the Dequindre Cut is one of
the most recognizable rail-trails in the
country and is a matter of great pride for
Detroiters.
“
It’s beautiful, ‘The Cut,’” says local
photographer Joe Gall, whose images
of the city’s bike culture have become
some of the most famous products of this
diverse and colorful scene. “It passes right
underneath the busiest part of the city,
which is nice. Everyone uses it.”
Though currently just more than
one mile in length, the great utility
of “The Cut” is simple; it goes where
the people who live there want to go,
connecting the riverfront area with the
Eastern Market to the north, head-
ing in the direction of the popular
Midtown neighborhood. A northward
extension of the Dequindre Cut, now
under construction and scheduled for
an early 2015 opening, has already
ramped up development interest in
properties along the corridor.
The realization of the Dequindre
Cut, and perhaps almost all the
significant trail development in the area
over the past decade, is traced back to
an organization called the Community
Foundation for Southeast Michigan
(
CFSEM)
(
https://cfsem.org
)
and a
pool of money and support known as the
GreenWays Initiative.
About $25 million in CFSEM funding
and private contributions unlocked another
$90 million of public and private invest-
ment in an inspired five-year span of trail
development between 2001 and 2006.
One of the first projects the GreenWays
Initiative breathed life into was the Conner
Creek Greenway.
A growing bike culture, for active
transportation and recreation, and extensions
to trails such as the Dequindre Cut (left), are
spurring a new Detroit.
Joe Gall (4)
rails
to
trails
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