Attempting to shake its reputation as a lethal place for bicyclists and pedestrians, Broward County has begun designing a network of paved trails that will make it possible to travel safely through the county without a car.

The County Commission has awarded a $2.4 million contract to Williams, Hatfield & Stoner Inc., a Fort Lauderdale engineering firm, to survey routes and obtain permits for a system of trails called greenways.

Often described as linear parks, greenways are paved paths along roads and canals that will be open to joggers, skaters, cyclists and horseback riders. Each greenway will have parking spaces, picnic tables, drinking fountains and other amenities.

The 210 miles of trails will run along State Road 84, Dixie Highway, State Road A1A, the Cypress Creek/C-14 Canal, Flamingo Road/Hiatus Road and the levee along the Everglades. Over the next year or so, county planners and consultants will make the detailed decisions on exactly where the paths should go, which intersections will require bridges and other issues.

Laid out in the era of the internal combustion engine, Broward County presents serious challenges to the construction of greenways. Traffic-choked six-lane roads dominate much of the county, creating intersections that intimidate the most intrepid pedestrians. As the county’s planners and engineers design the greenways, they must find ways to get them safely through intersections and thread them through heavily developed areas.

“We have so many hurdles in Broward County because the greenways should have come first,” said County Commissioner Kristin Jacobs, who started the county’s greenway program. “We have been chasing the car in Broward County since its inception. You can see why people don’t ride bikes. The system is not geared toward it, even if you have bike lanes.”

Along the State Road 84 greenway, the county will construct pedestrian bridges over major intersections. But that won’t be possible along all the greenways, said Mark Horowitz, Broward County’s bicycle coordinator.

There are other problems. The county planners must find a way to route the Dixie Highway greenway around Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, probably west of the airport. And they must connect the two segments of State Road A1A that are separated by Port Everglades. An initial plan called for routing the path through the port, but that idea died when increased security measures were imposed after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Bicycle enthusiasts are thrilled with the greenways plan, particularly because South Florida routinely ranks near the top of lists of the most dangerous places in the United States to walk or ride a bike.

A 2000 study ranked the Fort Lauderdale-Miami area the third most dangerous in the United States for pedestrians. Last year, 42 pedestrians were killed by motor vehicles in Broward County, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

The number of bicyclists killed in Broward County has fallen from 14 in 1999 to six last year. But Broward County still ranks first in the state for bicycle injuries, with 597 last year.

“As a vehicular cyclist, I have a right to the road,” said Shari Bernhard, a longtime member of the South Broward Wheelers bicycle club. “But I don’t want that on my epitaph.”

Once the Cypress Creek greenway is created, she’ll be able to pedal from her home in Plantation to her office near Federal Highway. She said the paths would entice more people to do similar things.

“It will get more people into cycling,” she said. “I think more people will commute. If there are fewer car trips, you have less pollution. Especially down in Florida, where the weather is beautiful almost all the time, there’s almost no excuse.”

It could take 10 years to build the trails, Horowitz said. But major segments will be done years earlier. The first ones to be done will probably be the Cypress Creek and Flamingo/Hiatus greenways because they’re the easiest, he said. For each corridor, the county will have public workshops before making final decisions with the cities along the routes.

The project will cost about $36 million, not counting the A1A greenway, which was recently added to the list. In addition to using county money, the county hopes to obtain funding from the state and federal government, Horowitz said.

No one knows how many people will use the greenways. But the system will provide an alternative to the county’s dangerous roads.

“That’s the beauty of the greenways,” Jacobs said. “It’s a safe place to go as a family.”

More information is on the county’s greenways Web site, greenways/masterplan.htm.

David Fleshler can be reached at or 954-356-4535.