Cyclists, rev your crankset! Bikers across Lane County will have an abundance of new routes connecting the five districts.
Andy Vobora, VP of stakeholder relations for Travel Lane County, helped lead the Travel Lane County team in developing bike paths across the entirety of Lane County without the need to traverse a highway.
“Obviously, one of the goals of this project is to not use any state highways. We just think it’s safer for people to stay on auxiliary roads that are nearby,” Vobora said. “And that’s a better experience for them, certainly safer. So that’s our goal.”
This project began in 2016 with Cottage Grove, Coburg, McKenzie Bridge, Oakridge, Veneta, and Junction City transforming into a “premier bicycling destination.”
This picked up traction quickly with 78 local tourism stakeholders and residents participating in four workshops between October 2016 and April 2017. That led to an $8,000 grant from the Bicycle Ambassador Program in March 2018, as well as funding from Travel Oregon soon after.
Despite the clear traction this project had, the Covid pandemic brought activity to a halt.
“Things kind of ground to a halt, like lots of stuff,” Vobora said. “So it was kind of languishing there for a bit. I think the Council of Governments and a lot of those committees that met initially to scope out the exact routes, the roads that would be used, the design of the sign, all those things, kind of stopped during that period.”
At this time Connect Lane County had only one segment connecting McKenzie to Oakridge. The project was on hiatus until 2023, when Vobora was able to get back the grant money for the project.
“I went to the director and asked her if we could become the lead on the project a couple of years ago, and she gladly said, ‘You bet!’ And signed us over the remaining funds out of that grant so that we could get started on building out additional segments.”
Now, TLC has four approved segments for Connect Lane County – connecting Oakridge to Cottage Grove, Cottage Grove to Creswell, and Creswell to Eugene.
The priority for Connect Lane County is to give cyclists quality paths made for bikes, he said.
“It’s really just a matter of the time and budget,” Vobora said. “I think we hope to do a couple of segments a year, and so within a few years, I think we should have it all built out.”
Riverview golf tournament
The second annual Riverview Center for Growth golf tournament was held Friday, Sept. 26. Riverview is an organization focused on mental health awareness and provides “compassionate emotional, behavioral, and mental health” therapy to patients of all ages and backgrounds, it states on its website.
The tournament raises money to fund its services. On Friday, Riverview saw 19 teams compete out of a total of 27 sponsorships. Tournament official Meghan Melton said they raised $16,000 – well over expectations.
