Opening of Lake Ming Bike Path celebrated at ribbon cutting Friday
Mar. 31—There's an old saying among cyclists that four wheels may move the body, but two wheels move the soul.
Kern County 3rd District Supervisor Jeff Flores, Kern County Public Works Assistant Director Scott Radsick and 50 or 60 others gathered near the shores of Lake Ming on a beautiful Friday morning to celebrate the official opening of the Lake Ming Bike Path.
"We had a few issues with safety," Flores told the gathering, "but we maximized safety without compromising on the quality — and that's the project we're going to deliver today."
The project, Flores said, is part of the Kern River Specific Trails Plan approved in 2003. It completes the Kern River Parkway alignment, provides a continuous loop around Lake Ming and completes the goal for a lake-to-lake bike path in Kern County.
"It's more than 30 miles of continuous bike infrastructure from Lake Ming to Lake Buena Vista," Flores said. "It's now connecting communities and increasing active modes of transportation."
Radsick thanked Kern Council of Governments for funding the $401,000 project and Kern County General Services for providing the location on park property for Friday's event.
He lauded Flores for his support in overseeing the completion of the path segment, and he thanked former 3rd District Supervisor Mike Maggard not only for providing the momentum to initiate the project, but also for being a consistent advocate for cycling safety and active transportation improvements in the community.
"I would also like to give a special shoutout to Bike Bakersfield and the Kern Wheelmen for their unwavering support of the path," Radsick said.
He also acknowledged Public Works engineering technician Jessica Zaragoza, who, he said, "spent hundreds of hours designing the multiple iterations of this path alignment."
Indeed, in 2021 one iteration of the bike path was all set to loop around the Kern River Golf Course. But that ambitious plan hit a sand trap in the 11th hour after operators of the golf course objected.
After undergoing environmental study, mapping and planning, the county-prepared project was ultimately rejected as planners and engineers were sent back to the drawing board.
But on Friday, all that seemed forgotten as Kern Wheelmen President Joe Watkins celebrated this latest extension of Kern's ever-growing cycling infrastructure.
"Everything that extends the bike path is looked upon with great favor," Watkins said, "because it gives us safe transit — now from Lake BV to here."
He hopes, he said, to see more north-south connectors.
"As the roads become more congested, something like this bike path, for the safety aspect, really becomes more important to us — and to everybody, really."
In addition to constructing the path, the county also installed three benches along the path, which, according to Radsick, are the first of their kind in Kern.
Public Works employee Mike Rodriguez fabricated the combination bench-bike racks from scratch.
"These benches are dedicated in memory to three of our fellow Kern County employees who left us too soon," Radsick said.
The names of those employees are Public Works engineers Mark Evans and Patsy Ebel and planner Patty Thomsen.
Karen Evans, Mark Evans' widow, smiled as she sat on one of the benches following Friday's ribbon cutting.
"Mark would have loved this," she said.
Reporter Steven Mayer can be reached at 661-395-7353. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter: @semayerTBC.
