Piece by piece, the proposed 3,000-mile East Coast Greenway bike trail is coming together.
The latest section to be designated for the Maine to Florida bicycle route is about 11 miles of the Bronx River Trail (about half is complete) between White Plains and the Bronx. The unfinished portions are in the planning stages.
When complete, the East Coast Greenway will stretch from Calais, Maine, to Key West, Florida, with the ultimate goal of being off-road and traffic-free. About 21 percent of the trail is open to public use.
Good atmosphere
In reporting on the Bronx River Trail, the Lower Hudson Online noted that the Greenway is coming together at a time when city planners are interested in bike-friendly communities.
The East Coast Greenway project was launched about 14 years ago with the goal to link 25 of the cities along the East Coast by a bicycle and hiking path, a sort of urban alternative to the Appalachian Trail.
Most of the trail uses existing bike paths, canal towpaths, and abandoned railroad rights-of-way. Currently many of the links between these trails are along low-traffic streets, although the goal is to make the trail completely off-road.
The Rhode Island-based East Coast Greenway Alliance essentially designates sections of trail for the greenway, leaving the ownership of the trails in place with the local jurisdictions.
Current status
When complete, the trail will roll through 15 states and the District of Columbia. Sections of the trail are designated in all but three states, and the alliance aims to complete a major portion of the job by 2010.
As I scrolled through a list of trails that currently make up the Greenway, I was struck by what a monumental task the alliance has undertaken. There are 75 trails on the list, and only 20 percent greenway is complete. Most trail sections of the Greenway are 3 to 10 miles long.
The longest off-road trail is the 28-mile D&R Canal Trail between Trenton and New Brunswick, New Jersey. Elsewhere, shorter trails are strung together, like Maryland's BWI Trail and B&A Trail described at BikeWashington.org.
Even though the trail is incomplete, bicyclists have been touring the route. This past summer, Kerry Dooley and Andy Castelano bicycled the route roughly from Connecticut to Florida. You can read a blog of their adventures (with their dog Patch) at Patch's Greenway Adventure.
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