St. Tammany Parish reviews draft comprehensive bicycle and pedestrian plan; officials ask about tunnels, Military Road

St. Tammany Parish officials on Monday heard a presentation of a draft comprehensive bicycle and pedestrian plan prepared by a consultant working with the Regional Planning Commission (RPC), outlining a parish-wide network of bike lanes, side paths, paved shoulders and intersection treatments and a set of supporting policies and project prioritizations.

The draft plan assembles existing facilities and proposed routes from local municipal plans, identifies roughly 160 linear route segments and more than 168 locations for intersection treatments, and pairs those with cost estimates, design guidelines and suggested programs such as a model complete streets policy, maintenance recommendations and community encouragement programs.

The plan’s consultant said the effort included two public-engagement phases (January–February and July–August), online mapping tools and pop-up events at farmers markets and other community sites; the consultant said each outreach phase received about 300 responses. The consultant described the network as a mix of paved shoulders in rural north parish areas, side paths and sidewalks in more urbanized southern areas and separated shared-use paths like the Tammany Trace.

"We're the lead consultant on this project, which is being done actually by…