Grant to boost Riverhead bike rack count

Riverhead has a lot of scenic rural roads, and is undergoing a determined effort to create bicycle trails to get people out and around the town to its parks and recreation sites and other destinations.

But there's a problem. It doesn't have bike racks. A recent survey by the town showed that, except at schools, there were only a handful of bicycle racks in Riverhead. But, come spring, new racks will be springing up "like mushrooms" at town beaches and parks and other destinations, said Councilwoman Jodi Giglio, who is on the town's alternate transportation committee.

There will be 20 of them, all paid for through a grant from Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk, which will be providing them through its own Creating Healthy Places in Suffolk County grant, a five-year, $1.2 million program that focuses on finding creative ways to prevent or reduce obesity-related health problems in Riverhead, Babylon and Southampton.

Susan Wilk, who runs the Cornell program, is on Giglio's alternate transportation committee, and said the idea of providing bike racks was a good match to the town's ongoing effort to create a network of bike paths across Riverhead.

Eighteen of the 20 bike racks will hold five bicycles each, and they will go up at town parks and beaches and other recreation facilities.

There will also be two special racks, artistically shaped like bicycles, that will go up in Riverhead's downtown business district: one at the community garden on West Main Street and the other in front of East End Arts on East Main Street. "We're calling those our 'gourmet bike racks,' " Wilk said.

The cost of the racks will be small -- about $50,000 -- but the Cornell program, which started last year, has been active in other ways, including helping to establish community gardens in all three towns.

The program spent about $50,000 to put up a fence around Riverhead's community garden on West Main Street by the Peconic River near the town comfort station, and worked to establish community gardens at Copiague High School and the Hampton Bays Middle School.

School officials are looking at the possibility of expanding the community garden idea to other schools in the district, and in Hampton Bays there are plans to add a fitness trail and a greenhouse near the existing garden.