COMMENT OF THE DAY: REDUCING THE USE OF PLASTIC ON THE TRAIL “why not have designated pooping grounds along the trails and get rid of the useless trash altogether? just treat your dogs like people and kids, kick them along and make them hold it until they can reach a ‘pooping grounds.’ only those that can’t reach the grounds should have to bag it.” [joel, commenting on The Multicolored Poop Bags of the Heights Hike and Bike Trail]
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Tag: Trails
THE MULTICOLORED POOP BAGS OF THE HEIGHTS HIKE AND BIKE TRAIL Alas — or should that be phew!? — no photos accompanied this brief report sent to Swamplot’s tip line: “Not sure if this qualifies for publication but I am not sure where else to turn to give this attention. Unfortunately I don’t jog with my camera so no photo yet but hope to submit one at some point. There are dog walkers that go through all the effort to bag their dogs’ poop only to toss it on the Houston Heights hike and bike trail. On any given day there are nice colorful bags of poop along the trail especially on the stretch from I-10 up to Nicholson. Pink, yellow, brown, black, and even turquoise bags preserving dog poop for all to enjoy. I am a bit perplexed at this practice of poop art.” [Swamplot inbox]
Harris County Housing Authority interim CEO Tom McCasland takes a visitor from Portland along the path of the bike trail he hopes will soon connect Downtown Houston seamlessly to the city’s northwestern suburbs. From Georgia’s Market downtown they head out the MKT Trail into the Heights, which dead ends near the Shepherd-Durham overpasses. “The lot turned into a truck path, which ended at a decrepit railroad bridge. We took a sharp right down a singletrack path along the edge of the bayou far below us,” writes Elly Blue, who’s been touring U.S. cities to assess their bikeability. McCasland, an advocate for expanding Houston bikeways, tells the Houston Press‘s John Nova Lomax that “part of the city’s latest grand biking plan is to dynamite [that burned-out bridge] and rebuild it as a bike/pedestrian thoroughfare. The trail will then continue along White Oak Bayou’s banks and connect with the existing trail that begins at West 11th and TC Jester and heads north through Timbergrove, Garden Oaks, Oak Forest and all the way up to Acres Homes.”
These signs, in versions specially designed for both taller and shorter readers, are now posted on the north side of the recently revamped Buffalo Bayou trail just before it ducks under Memorial Dr., a reader informs Swamplot. Just in case the message isn’t clear: This trail is a bike route. Two sets of double signs are posted, for trailgoers in each direction.
Photos: Swamplot inbox
A few homeowners in Katy’s Nottingham Country subdivision have now filed 2 separate lawsuits against Kickerillo Company, Inc. — the successor company to the firm that originally developed the subdivision in the 1970s. In 2010, Kickerillo transferred a strip of land along the southwest side of Mason Creek to the Harris County Flood District; the agency plans to build a 10-ft.-wide, $3.25 million trail along the waterway. The trail would allow bikers and hikers a clear path from the Kingsland Park & Ride on I-10 near Mason Rd. to George Bush Park. In a couple of news reports covering the controversy last year, Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack declared that the land along the waterway, which passes beyond the backyard fences of many Nottingham Country residents, now belongs to the county. A county attorney said that homeowners’ claims to the property resulted from a “misreading” of the plat.
