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2025 Fort Collins, Colorado
Role: Project Manager
The City of Fort Collins enjoys strong community support for trails and has successfully developed a national class paved trail system over the past three decades, helping the City earn it’s Platinum Bicycle Friendly Community designation from the League of American Bicyclists. As one of five cities with this designation, Fort Collins is accustomed to leading the way in innovative trail solutions and system expansion. This success is the foundation for the Strategic Trails Plan which updates the City’s 2013 plan that has largely been achieved.
Remaining opportunities for trail development are more challenging in many ways and Logan Simpson is currently leading the effort to 1) conduct effective outreach that reaches those segments of the community that may not have historically enjoyed the ability to use trails, 2) connect the gaps between underrepresented neighborhoods, and 3) establish an actionable framework for filling trail gaps and maintaining Fort Collins’ mature trail system. The robust scope of work prioritizes collaboration with the City’s Natural Areas and Active Modes Departments, emphasizing the nexus between on-street facilities and natural surface trails as part of a seamless interconnected system for navigating the City through active transportation and recreation.
In proposing alignments for over 62 miles of new trails, the planning process has so far included;
work sessions with City staff, including crew chiefs and trail maintenance leads, water engineers, natural areas and parks departments,
an assessment of proposed trail alignments along irrigation ditch company attitudes toward trail development, and
two series of interactive online maps collecting over 800 public comments and fostering discussion on the proposed trail system by over 5,000 viewers.
Identified as two of the highest city council priorities in the 2023 Strategic Plan, the STP is also contributing towards making Fort Collins a 15-Minute City, as well as facilitating tangible route alignments to provide Safer Routes to School with a proposed system of over 90% of trails falling within ¾ of a mile from a school, and every school having a major or minor trail within ¾ miles. The Strategic Trails Plan is anticipated to be adopted in the second quarter of 2025.