The federal "Recreational Trails Program"
(RTP), was created through the National Recreational Trail Fund Act
(NRTFA) as part of the Intermodal Surface Transporation Efficiency
Act of 1991 (ISTEA) and re-authorized by the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). This program provides funding
assistance for acquisition, development, rehabilitation and maintenance
of both motorized and non-motorized recreation trails. By law, 30% of
each states' RTP funding must be earmarked for motorized trail projects,
30% for non-motorized trail projects and the remaining 40% for multi-use
(diversified) motorized and non-motorized trails or a combination of
either.
The RTP program can provide up
to 80% federal funding on approved projects and requires a minimum 20%
non-federal funding match. Applications for grant assistance must be
received by IDNR no later than March 1 of each calendar year. Awards
are generally announced within 180 days following the application deadline
date.
Examples of eligible project
activities include:
- trail construction and rehabilitation;
- restoration of areas adjacent to trails
damaged by unauthorized trail uses;
- construction of trail-related support facilities
and amenities; and
- acquisition from willing sellers of trail
corridors through easements or fee simple title.
Grant assistance from this program cannot
be used for the following purposes:
- condemnation of any kind of interest in
property;
- construction of any motorized use trail
on U.S. Forest Service lands designated as wilderness or currently
not authorized for such use by an approved management plan; or
- upgrading, expanding or otherwise facilitating
motorized use or access to trails predominantly used by non-motorized
trail users, and on which, as of May 1, 1991, motorized use is either
prohibited or has not occurred.
Download
the Illinois
Trails Grant Programs manual.
You will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0
to view this file.
Starting
with the 2002 Trails manual, applications can be filled in
using Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 . Instructions
are available by clicking here.
An
Acrobat Reader is needed to view and print PDF documents. To download
Acrobat Reader 5.x, go to the Adobe Site at
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.
Accessibility tools for Adobe PDF documents are available that allow
visually disabled users to read documents in Adobe PDF format. These
tools convert PDF documents into either HTML or ASCII text which can
then be read by many screen reading programs. These tools can be downloaded
from Adobe at
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/access_onlinetools.html.
Return to the Illinois
Trails Grant Programs Page
Return to the Grants-in-Aid
Programs Page
