The Courtney Campbell Causeway trail is a proposed eight-mile path which would connect Pinellas and Hillsborough counties and will serve cyclists, runners and walkers. The trail will run along the south side of the parkway from Bayshore Boulevard in east Clearwater to Ben T. Davis Beach at the Tampa end of the causeway.
The total cost of that project is $20 million, with trail construction costing $15.4 million.
Wally Blaine with the MPO tells CL that typically in these kinds of projects there's a design phase and then the construction phase. But in this case, it's what's known as a "design build," which means one contract that a company will bid on to do both, which will begin sometime in the winter of 2012.
The funding comes from the US Department of Transportation, but the Hillsborough MPO had to compete with other agencies inside of Florida for it.
Officials say the trail will provide a regional connection for non-motorized travel between Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties. On the Pinellas side, the project will connect to Pinellas County's trail system via a proposed Bayshore Trail extension.
On the Hillsborough side, the trail would connect to the West Tampa Greenway that will eventually connect to the Upper Tampa Bay Trail and from there to the Suncoast Parkway Trail into Pasco and Hernando Counties.
