Bikeway On Track for June Completion

Mission City Bikeway, a long-delayed bicycle corridor funded by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, will finally be built, San Fernando city officials said Tuesday.

“A lot of people have been wondering if we were ever going to build it; we’re ready and anxious to get going,” said San Fernando city engineer Jerry Wedding.

Plans for the mile-long path, which will run alongside MTA rail lines in the city, were approved by the MTA board of directors in July 1993. But construction on the $990,000 project has been delayed because of uncertainty surrounding the Pacific Pipeline project, which was designed to be built along the same stretch of MTA track as the bicycle path, Wedding said.

“We were worried that we would build a bikeway and that they would tear it up to build the pipeline,” he said.

But San Fernando officials said potential conflicts with the operators of the pipeline have been resolved and last week the City Council authorized the design firm, Boyle Engineering, to begin hiring contractors for the job.

MTA officials said Tuesday that the agency was supportive of the bicycle path but would not confirm that problems posed by the Pacific Pipeline project had been resolved.

If all goes according to plan, construction will begin in January and could be completed by June, Wedding said.

When completed, Mission City Bikeway will run the entire width of San Fernando, bisecting the city from Wolfskill Street in the east to Hubbard Street in the west.

The 8-foot-wide concrete path will be built on the north side of the MTA rail corridor and will include lighting, landscaping and a fence that will serve as a safety barrier between the path and the tracks, Wedding said.

The bikeway will extend from Recreation Park to the San Fernando-Sylmar MetroLink station, which will eventually include lockup facilities for commuters’ bicycles.

“People will be able to leave their bikes at the station and ride the trains into town,” Wedding said.