Courtney Campbell Trail Now Connects Tampa to Clearwater over Upper Tampa Bay

With the cutting of a ribbon on Monday, the 9.5-mile Courtney Campbell Trail is officially open, connecting Tampa and Clearwater with a safe and scenic bicycle and pedestrian route across Florida’s Upper Tampa Bay.

As reported in this St. Petersburg Tribune article, the 4-mile section on the Pinellas County side of the bay was officially opened to the public with the ribbon cutting. About 5.5 miles of trail on the Hillsborough County side of the bay opened in 2013.

Ayres Associates congratulates the Florida Department of Transportation, District 7, and takes pride in Ayres’ role in improving the lives of residents on both sides of the bay.

Twenty years of efforts by the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council and the Courtney Campbell Causeway Scenic Highway Corridor Advisory Committee ultimately made the causeway trail a reality.

The most recent portion of the project (on the Pinellas County side) included 1.75 miles of Ayres Associates trail design, of which 475 feet involved a bridge. The previous project (on the Hillsborough County side) included a 3.9-mile section designed by Ayres, of which about two-thirds of a mile involved a major bridge over the bay.

The trail, which runs adjacent to the busy Courtney Campbell Causeway (SR 60), has attracted plenty of attention already, particularly the 3,258-foot-long bridge Ayres Associates designed for the Hillsborough County side of the facility. The bridge delivers breathtaking views of the scenic area from strategically placed lookout points. At more than 45 feet above the water, it is the only high-level pedestrian bridge in Florida.

Ayres also designed new seawalls, shore protection, an access road, stormwater treatment, and parking relating to the trail. The design and construction of the structure addressed the sensitive marine environment and the challenging variability in soil profiles and bedrock layers in which it is founded.

The bridge project earned an Award of Excellence in the Hillsborough County Planning Commission’s 32nd annual Planning & Design Awards program last fall. It also collected a Grand Award from the 2014 Florida Institute of Consulting Engineers’ Engineering Excellence Awards and a National Recognition Award from the American Council of Engineering Companies’ 2014 Engineering Excellence Awards.