Back to the Levee

Took a ride out to the Spillway on Saturday     

Since a lack of  Team Time Trial teammates, together with the necessity of my presence at said Team Time Trial, caused me to miss riding on Saturday morning altogether, I set my sights on the afternoon.

Near Moss Rd. - all clear

Fortunately, the weather around here has been pretty spectacular lately, and Saturday afternoon was sunny and dry and not particularly hot. Rather than trying to survive mid-day weekend traffic I decided to see what the river levee bike path had to offer.  I'd been out there the Monday before and found the barricade at Moss Road down but with heavy equipment still at work nearby, so we'd turned back. The levee work should be nearing completion around now, and as far as I can tell it's what I'd call "substantially complete," which is to say the bike path is fine except in a few places, although there's obviously more work to do around the edges, so to speak.

Dirt and ongoing work around
River Ridge

Out around Moss Road where there has been a barricade, fence and signage for the past year or more, it's now open.  There were no signs at all on Saturday, nor any indication that the bike path was closed, although the center stripe is missing and there are still some bulldozers working on the sides of the levee in a few places. I rode on through unimpeded.  There were a number of places where the path is covered with dirt, and a couple of little spots where it seems there's no asphalt at all. It's not at a point where I'd be comfortable doing a group ride at fast speeds, especially in the dark, but otherwise it was pretty nice.

Williams Blvd. - Kind of Clear

The area around the Florida Street pipes is a mess and is obviously serving as a major access point for heavy equipment, much of which was parked there.  It was necessary to pick my way through the tractors and mud and rocks, but fortunately it was dry and not much of a problem.

At Williams Blvd, where there had been more fences and barricades, I again found the path to be open, although the barricades were sitting there alongside the path. From here to the Jefferson Parish line where the levee-raising project ended there were a number of spots where the edges of the new bike path had already kind of caved in under the weight of cars, trucks, or other heavy equipment.  This was bad enough to be dangerous to a cyclist, especially in the dark. Riding alone during the day, however, made it easy to avoid the problem areas.

Some sections of missing asphalt

Farther down the bike path and up the river the big grain elevator has been building a huge new conveyor over the levee.  There they have put up this little narrow slightly elevated access lane with "walk your bike" signs.  It looks pretty permanent. I don't know if it is or not. At any rate, it's really only wide enough for one bike.

From there I rode all the way out to the Spillway.  The only thing I noticed was that much of the bike path in Jefferson Parish and above seems to have eroding edges where I assume the grass has degraded the asphalt. Effectively, the path is about a foot narrower than it used to be.

Grain elevator

They announced that they would start working on the Lakefront "levee lift" project some time this month, starting with Phase 1 from the western end of the bike path to Williams Blvd.  I guess that should take a couple of months at least, so it shouldn't affect the rest of the lakefront bike path, which is the part that the group ride uses.  Hopefully the river levee path will be back to normal before Phase II starts on the lakefront. One can hope.

Some broken up sections of new asphalt

More broken new asphalt