Anchorage officially opened its long-awaited Ship Creek Trail connecting downtown to Mountain View on Tuesday.

The 2.6-mile paved path with several bridges starts near the Alaska Railroad depot and winds with the creek to Tyson Elementary School in Mountain View.

The idea for the $12 million trail began getting serious consideration in 1996. It was funded primarily through parks and recreation bonds and federal grants. The Alaska Railroad contributed $1.5 million.

On Tuesday morning, bikers and walkers were already using the trail, which goes in and out of woods and through industrial sections full of office buildings, warehouses and storage yards.

Parts of the trail have been used for years, said city trails coordinator Lori Schanche, but it was only several weeks ago that bridges crossing the creek and railroad tracks were completed.

The original idea was to extend the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail at Second Avenue east along Ship Creek. The new Ship Creek Trail is not connected to the Coastal Trail now, but the city plans to link them someday, Schanche says. It also wants to connect the Ship Creek Trail to the trail along the Glenn Highway farther to the east.

"It's a hop, skip and a jump to the north end of the Coastal Trail," said Mike Mitchell, president of the Anchorage Trails and Greenways Coalition, which advocates for trails and trail users. His group has been working on getting the project completed for years.

Brian Litmans, president of the newly formed Bicycle Commuters of Anchorage, is happy about the trail because it offers a route free of trucks and cars and narrow sidewalks that riders used to have to navigate from the city's northeast neighborhoods to downtown.

Anchorage has about 250 miles of trails. The 11 miles of the Coastal Trail was constructed in the 1980s.