They held a rodeo Saturday afternoon behind Allens Avenue, but no one was riding horses.
TAUNTON — They held a rodeo Saturday afternoon behind Allens Avenue, but no one was riding horses.
Billed as a "bike rodeo," the three-hour event was a quiet affair intended to generate interest in the city's Taunton Pathways, which is an initiative to add and improve bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure opportunities in the Silver City.
Saturday's event was held on the grounds of Mill River Park and Riverwalk.
Visitors were encouraged to ride the park's winding-and-circular, tenth-of-a-mile-long walking path.
Mock traffic signs and small-scale road markers and cones were set up to remind bicyclists how to properly and safely navigate streets and roads.
Tracey Hixon and her daughter Hayley showed up with their bikes and helmets.
"It's kind of fun," Hixon, 46, said.
The Taunton mom said she found out she wasn't using the correct technique in using her arm to give a turn signal.
"I had it backwards," she said.
And although she's lived in Taunton since 2000, Hixson said it wasn't until a week ago, when someone mentioned the upcoming bike rodeo, that she learned of the existence of the Mill River Park and Riverwalk.
"I said, 'There's a park back there?' Now I might post something (about it) on Improving Taunton," she said, referring to a popular Taunton-centric Facebook page.
Mill River Park was the subject of a 2012 Taunton Daily Gazette story that examined why, eight months after opening to the public, it remained under-utilized and under-appreciated.
The tree-lined and carefully landscaped park, with its path and benches, was created with $1.24 million in matching grants — with most of the money coming via the state's Gateway Park Initiative and the rest from the city's annual allotment of the federal Community Development Block Grant program.
In addition to Taunton Pathways, volunteer members of the Taunton chapter of the statewide program called Mass In Motion had set up their own table to dispense information and hand out flyers.
"That's important too," Hixon said.
Heather Rios-Pistoor said as Mass In Motion coordinator for the city of Taunton she's overseen a three-year Massachusetts Department of Public Safety grant worth approximately $110,00.
The grant, which Rios-Pistoor said has recently been extended an additional three years, was used to organize the Silver City Farmers Market, held every Thursday at Hopewell Park from July through October.
It also, she said, was used to create a community produce garden at Bristol Commons housing development and similar gardens and individual growing plots at Taunton High School and for the local Head Start pre-school program.
"For me it's the perfect marriage," Rios-Pistoor, who also works at Taunton's YMCA, said of sharing space Saturday with Taunton Pathways.
Phil Duarte, chairman of the Taunton Pathways committee, said he and his group have been in contact with Kenneth Goulart, general manager of Taunton Municipal Lighting Plant.
Duarte, 21, said they're seeking the assistance of the TMLP, which he says is installing a photovoltaic, or solar, array at its Cleary-Flood Generating Station on Somerset Avenue.
Duarte, who attends college at UMass Amherst, said his committee would like to utilize a railroad bed that divides the generating station from oil tanks — in order to establish a bike-and-pedestrian path that would extend north to Fifth Street and the new Weir Village Riverfront Park on West Water Street.
"We want to work with them to clear the land," he said.
Duarte said he got the idea for Taunton Pathways last summer, when he visited riding paths in other municipalities and was doing an internship at the State House in Boston.
Duarte said state Rep. Patricia Haddad, D-Somerset, referred him to Bill Napolitano, environmental program director for Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District, who previously was involved with the Taunton River Trail and its effort to establish a multi-use path running from Somerset and Dighton to Taunton.
He then spoke with and gained the support of Mayor Thomas Hoye Jr. and the City Council, which voted to establish the committee.
Brewster Ambulance Service, the city's private ambulance provider, was on hand Saturday with a vehicle two employees.