I had a nice chat with Madision superintendent of Parks, Jim Morgan. Among the things we talked about was the connection to the SouthWest Path through the Odana Hills golf course. The story we had heard was that Parks was opposed to this connection for 'safety' reasons. Jim tells a slightly different story. Parks only opposed the connection because there was not enough money to build it safely - that is, not using the existing service road (avoiding conflict with Parks vehicles) and not going through the parking lot (avoiding conflict with motor vehicles). And if the city comes up with such a design, he will gladly embrace it. In fact, at his last job, Jim was extremely active in building bike trails. He was rather disappointed that this was not included in the original design. (It should be noted that the design was pretty much done by the time he moved to Madison). His main concern, obviously, is that Parks could be held liable if an accident occurs at the golf course. In fact, he said there was an accident recently - apparently a child was hit by a car. I don't have any more details on this. Because we were having a polite conversation, I did not directly point out that blocking the access was seen as a rather hostile act. I also did not suggest that he remove the main threat to safety, the motor vehicles. In any case, his current position is that a) Parks will not physically block access, but b) he is on record as opposing this for the reasons dicussed above. We still don't have a permanent solution. We need a real path, which won't be suffer from erosion, and which will be plowed. Also, signage would help the two user groups (golfers and cyclists) interact better. More details as they develop.
