The Salt Lake Valley is blessed with numerous opportunities for neighbors to share social and recreational time within convenient blocks of their homes while strolling along often shaded, traffic-protected, naturally landscaped paths that lend themselves to relaxation and community building.
Murray, Draper, Magna, Sandy and West Valley City have designated routes along canal rights-of-way managed by Salt Lake City.
Outside of the Salt Lake Valley, Clearfield, Mapleton and the Murdock Canal trails offer quiet breaks from streets and sidewalks in those communities. And don’t forget the Jordan River Parkway.
White City has a plan to utilize an abandoned canal to connect to the Sandy Canal trail and Holladay City has a 2004 Trails Master Plan that would codify some long-used canal trails in that area, but the “right of passage” along at least two of those trails in Holladay (one at Arbor Lane and one at Fardown Ave) has recently been restricted by 6′ chain link or steel mesh gates.
Does Salt Lake City have a good reason to close those entry points? Are they planning to close others?
If so, I hope they will hold some community “problem solving” sessions. Not argument sessions, but sessions to share canal trail concerns and search for mutually acceptable solutions.
Andy White, Holladay