Park Ridge-to-Barrington bike path planned

The Northwest Municipal Conference has completed plans for a 20-mile bike path route along Northwest Highway from Park Ridge to Barrington.

But the time needed to collect the approximately $7.5 million for construction of the path remains unknown, said Mike Walczak, the conference’s program manager for transportation.

Most of the communities involved — which also include Des Plaines, Mount Prospect, Arlington Heights, Rolling Meadows and Palatine — will probably wait until grant funding can be secured to do construction, Walczak added.

The estimated construction cost doesn’t include engineering and right-of-way acquisition, he said.

The conference received $66,000 from the federal Communities Putting Prevention to Work program and the Cook County Department of Public Health, which allowed it to complete both the bike path plan and a related signage plan.

The latter plan recommends a network of wayfinding and destination signs along the conference’s regional bike paths.

Not only have all the affected communities endorsed the Northwest Highway plan, they’ve been part of the process from the start, Walczak said.

Each municipality will likely work on its segment of the path at its own pace, but the plan in place insures they will all eventually link up.

The plan includes both short-term and long-term options for participation, with the short-term ones allowing for less costly and slightly more circuitous routes that are more reliant on existing infrastructure, Walczak said.

Barrington and Park Ridge were identified as end points of the plan because the project’s grant funding dictated that participants had to be Cook County communities that belong to the Northwest Municipal Conference.

But Chicago to the east and other Barrington-area communities to the west have expressed enough interest in their own bike path plans that an even longer route may one day be possible for bicyclists, Walczak said.

The conference, headquartered in Des Plaines, represents 41 suburban municipalities and one township.