Imagine pedaling happily along a paved path where murals and stand-alone art works distract you from the shabbiness or outright ugliness of Springfield’s backsides, passing frolicking children and couples strolling hand in hand thinking how lucky they are to be living in a city that… well, that part of the daydream is not quite clear yet.
It took more than 100 years and the expenditure of many millions of dollars, but Springfield next year will have rerouted freight trains from the Third Street tracks seven blocks to the east. Plans are afoot to turn the old rail corridor into a brand-new urban greenway/linear park/multipurpose path through the heart of old Springfield. Mayor Misty Buscher will remind you that whatever you call it, it’s spelled O-P-P-O-R-T-U-N-I-T-Y!
The city hired the national planning firm RDG to design it, with Hanson Professional Services acting as the local engineering partner. Dubbed “The Linc,” the nearly six-mile urban rail-to-trail project would have all the accoutrements common to such projects—your curvy jogging/cycling path, your public art works, your flower beds and the same play equipment that the kiddies won’t touch at the park. In combination (we are promised) these features will not only transform Third Street but transform the city – in RDG’s words, “enhance local and regional connectivity, bridge physical and cultural divisions, and bolster economic growth in the downtown core.”
And on the seventh day they rested.
Sorry about that. I couldn’t resist. Hyping your client’s projects is part of the game, and it’s harmless fun as long as no one takes it seriously. The infrastructure improvements detailed by Hanson are sound, especially the handsome observation deck that would replace the rickety and rusted bridge that carries the tracks across Capitol Avenue. While the programming and public involvement outlined by RDG are more wishful than useful, the preliminary planning and site design is good enough.
Ah, but planners don’t make happy public spaces, people do. The first question we must ask is, do enough people live along The Linc to make it work? Consider a project of this sort that works very well – The 606 in Chicago, which runs atop an abandoned elevated rail line and connects the northwest neighborhoods of Humboldt Park, Logan Square, Bucktown and Wicker Park. The 606 draws an estimated 1 million users a year, in large part because some 80,000 people livewithin a 10-minute walk.
That’s approximately 30,000 people per mile. And The Linc? A good guess puts the population within a 10-minute walk at 12,000 people or about 2,000 per mile. That’s an overall average; most of the potential users are to be found in the downtown core sections, since along much of its length to the north and south The Linc is flanked mostly by empty lots, parking lots and industrial properties. This matters because among other things, what makes public spaces safe is the presence of other people. The size of the population adjacent to the new corridor also affects demand for The Linc as a strolling or jogging path.
However (partly to justify the use of government transportation funds), The Linc is mostly touted as a two-wheel commuting route. It will connect the fairgrounds on the north side of town to recreation bike trails on the south and along the way will pass big job centers such as the state’s Harris and Bloom buildings on South Grand Ave., the Capitol complex and the Medical District.
Nonetheless, a new Lawrence Avenue this will not be. A few more cyclists will leave the cars at home if they have a new car-free (but not weather-free) path to work. But fewer than 200 workers in Springfield now commute primarily by bicycle, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s roughly 0.1% to 0.3% of the city’s overall commuting workforce. Even if The Linc swells that number by a factor of 10, the dent made in car use will be small.
The project is likely to take years to finish and much about it and the city is likely to change. In the meantime, we can reflect that it’s not street furniture and plantings that determine whether a project of this sort will succeed. What matters is that the social and economic assumptions that are embedded in it reflect the actual city. It might happen that the “neighborhood gathering and community events and small-scale sporting activities” that Hanson suggests in its imagined version of the “Residential Infill” zone south of Ash will include group yoga but it seems just as likely that such spaces will be used for skateboarding or dice games or getting high.
To-may-to, to-mah-to. Even if no one uses that space for anything at all, well, it should make a swell jogging and cycling path.
James Krohe has lived more than 12 years of his life within a block of what he fondly remembers as the old GM&O tracks.
This article appears in October 1-7, 2026.
