Planning begins on $18.4M Bill Sims trail improvements

Community Development Manager Allen Stover, who is managing the grant, said this week that he and a group of city employees met last week with AECOM, the preliminary engineer on the project.

The city received a Reconnecting Communities Pilot and Neighborhood Access and Equity grant in March 2024. The project is part of the Singing River Trail, a 220-mile project that aims to connect many trails across north Alabama.

According to the grant announcement, the improvement of the Bill Sims trail — referred to as the Dr. Bill Sims Hike-Bike Way in the grant application — is aimed at “reconnecting communities that were cut off by transportation infrastructure decades ago, leaving entire neighborhoods without direct access to opportunity, like schools, jobs, medical offices, and places of worship.”

Stover said AECOM is working on preliminary options for the Bill Sims trail, which will extend the trail for the first time into Old Town Decatur.

AECOM is working on the options while Stover forms a community advisory committee. This group will consist primarily of people who were involved in working on the grant application, he said.

“AECOM is getting some stuff together that the community advisory committee can review in three or four weeks,” Stover said.

He said the advisory committee will review the options and then promote public meetings that are planned for the spring.

According to the grant application, "The project seeks to address two dividing and burdening facilities, Highway 20 and the railroad, by improving crossings. Proposed projects include enhancing an at-grade crossing of Highway 20 at Oak Street, directing pedestrians and cyclists to an existing pedestrian bridge over the railroad, and improving conditions of an existing tunnel under Highway 20."

Stover said some of the proposals in the grant application “conflict with points managed by the railroad and ALDOT (Alabama Department of Transportation) that aren’t going to change.”

The biggest change will be the extension into Old Town, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, a predominantly Black area in Northwest Decatur.

The project area is located within the city on the south side of the Tennessee River.

According to the grant application, the 8.77-mile project extends from Point Mallard Park to Benjamin Davis Elementary School in Northwest Decatur.

The project adds new safety enhancements to the existing Bill Sims trail.

The project design will include “new shared use paths, streetscape improvements, separated bicycle lanes, mid-block crossings, sidewalks, and new streetscape elements like lighting and landscaping."

The streetscape improvements would be along Vine and Sycamore streets, according to the grant application. 

The project would increase access to parks and commercial redevelopment along the Tennessee River and create safer and more connected walking and bicycling facilities in Old Town and along the riverfront.

Mayor Tab Bowling said the trail planning is exciting, particularly since it’s another quality-of-life project for his administration.

“It’s good to know that it’s being done by a team (AECOM) that’s done this in other cities across the country,” Bowling said. “Hopefully, this is going to be a smooth project since we won’t have a lot of of rights-of-way acquisitions.”

Bowling said there was concern and then relief last month when President Donald Trump froze federal grants but then ended the freeze.

The no-match grant requires the completion of the project by Nov. 30, 2026.

“Much of the timeline will be dictated by right-of-way acquisition,” Stover said. “But the good thing is a lot of the project is improving the existing trail.”