Finally! We have a New Bridge over Higgins Road (Route 72) on the west end of the Busse Woods Trail (BWT). I first noticed the bridge ~ from Higgins Road below ~ this past December (2013) but I had not ridden the trail yet this year.

New Bridge Over Higgins Road for Busse Woods Trail

I also know that the bridge was not in place in August of 2013 when I took the BWT to the last Tour of Elk Grove ~ which, by the way, sadly probably was the actual “last” Tour of Elk Grove which I will cover in a future blog post soon.

The New Bridge on the west end of the red trail is a huge improvement in the Busse Woods Trail system. I always hated the busy road crossing at Higgins Road and the expressway entrance and exit ramps. There were lights, painted pedestrian crossings  and crossing signals but this was still a fast and busy and dangerous intersection where you needed to cross at least 6 lanes of traffic. On top of that, you would almost always have to stop and wait for the signals to cross which would break up the momentum of your ride.

Well, now you can ride the entire Busse Woods Red Trail loop, on both sides of Higgins Road, almost non-stop (on a good day anyway). There are actually 2 bridges over Higgins Road now. The bridge on the east end of the Red Trail, by Arlington Heights Road, has been there for many years now. Having both bridges now is just a great improvement to this trail system.

So this past week, I finally had a chance to ride the Busse Woods Trail with the new bridge ~ and it was excellent, of course. Being May, the newly planted grass, had not fully come in and was still mostly brown but I did manage to photograph the new bridge and update the Busse Woods Trail pages on this website and include a New Photo Page with photos of the new bridge.

You can find the original Busse Woods Trail pages here. The original photo pages were from fall of 2005 so there are a few photos of how the old trail section and crossing looked before the new bridge.

Then I have included photos of the New Busse Woods Bridge here.

I have also included my GPS ride data and Map of the Red Trail here (on the Garmin Connect site) now that I have my GPS bike computer (Garmin Edge 800) and can capture my ride data.

Finally, if you prefer a video, you can see my original video of the entire Busse Woods Trail (prior to the new bridge) here on YouTube. The video was done with an old camcorder so the quality is not great and the audio was done with some now obsolete recording equipment so it’s quality is also not great BUT on the other hand it does include the ENTIRE TRAIL and the sound track is original :-).

The video is 14 minutes and 45 seconds and the old Higgins Road crossing is brief and at the 6 minute marker.

Coming Soon… I will be posting an update on the Tour of Elk Grove status soon and I just returned from a trip to Wisconsin where I had a chance to ride the Lacrosse River and Great River Trails. Of course I have photos and will post an entire update as soon as it is completed so stop back soon…