Public bike, pedestrian meetings set for Lake Wylie, Fort Mill

People who want places to walk or ride, now have a place to tell someone about it.

Two community workshops will be held June 27, one in Fort Mill and one in Lake Wylie, on a plan to improve bicycle and pedestrian connections throughout the area. Bikeways, walkways and trails could be created. The workshops are hosted by the Rock Hill-Fort Mill Area Transportation Study.

David Hooper, RFATS administrator, said he’s interested to find out which areas people see as lacking connectivity, or as opportunities for new access. While his work includes planning for major highways and interstates, it also includes smaller scale transportation down to a walking or biking path.

“People think roads,” Hooper said. “But this is an important component.”

Both workshops are drop-ins, from 4 to 7 p.m. Fort Mill hosts theirs at the Spratt Building on Main Street. Lake Wylie Public Library hosts the other. Ideally the meetings will help identify gaps that could connect existing bicycle or pedestrian paths, think of ways to improve safety for people using them and encourage people to walk or bike more often, reducing vehicular traffic on roadways.

RFATS is a distributor of federal transportation funds in the urbanized areas mostly of York County. Service areas include Rock Hill and Fort Mill, along with Tega Cay, Lake Wylie, the Indian Land panhandle and Catawba Indian Nation.

In recent years York County began creating bike loops, signing existing highways and connections to create five paths. The 49-miles Central York County route connects Rock Hill and York. The 31-mile Reservation route connects Rock Hill and the Catawba Indian Nation, while the newest Kings Mountain route is a 38-mile trip through York, Clover and the Kings Mountain area.

Future projects include the Fort Mill Loop connecting the Fort Mill and Tega Cay areas, and the Nimitz Loop west of York.

This story was originally published June 17, 2016 at 1:37 PM with the headline "Public bike, pedestrian meetings set for Lake Wylie, Fort Mill."