To the editor:

After observing families stroll and ride the new trail from Winslow Way to High School Road this past weekend, I write to take issue with your Reporter’s Notebook and several letters to the editor that characterized it as an unnecessary boondoggle.

I am disappointed your reporter failed to point out that the city paid only $303,750 of its cost. The rest was funded by a federal grant that would have gone to fund some other city’s trail had folks not had the foresight to apply for funding. No, the federal money could not have been spent on building a shoulder on Miller Road or some other road desperately in need of improvements.

When I moved to the island, there were no traffic lights north of High School Road. Deer could be spotted on Winslow Way on my way to the ferry. When High School Road was widened, there was an outcry against the over-kill. Same with the roundabout.

Winslow is no longer the sleepy town it once was. We need to plan for the future (picture 305 with no traffic lights today!) and we need to plan for connectivity through trails, for our community’s physical and psychic well-being. How many places on Bainbridge can families experience a ride together safely free of traffic?

Twenty years from now, we will thank the visionaries whose foresight saw this project through in the densest part of the island, just as we thank the visionaries who led the move to acquire the Grand Forest and to build the network of trails throughout the island.

ROB CRICHTON

Bainbridge Island