Connecticut – Page 2 – Exploring by bicycle

Construction sites along the East Coast Greenway

It’s inspiring to hear about parts of the East Coast Greenway that are now under construction.

I’m just back from the East Coast Greenway summit in Providence, Rhode Island. And while some participants couldn’t hold back on their disappointment over the presidential election, I prefer to focus on the inspiring developments I heard about.

There’s a huge amount of progress in creating the off-road network between Connecticut and Delaware in particular. Some of this is because the governors in both Connecticut and Delaware want the East Coast Greenway to be part of their legacy, as I’ve written before. So projects that have been in development are now close to the ribbon-cutting.

In Connecticut, almost 10 miles of trail will be completed this year and a minimum of another 20 miles next year. I saw many of those Connecticut projects on our long weekend there this summer (that’s where the photo is from), and hearing this makes me feel less disappointed that a Portland-to-Hartford ride will likely follow this year’s Calais-to-Portland ride in 2018, not 2017.

Bonus: a bridge over a highway is to be installed one Saturday night early next year (perhaps in April?) and since the road will be closed, why not celebrate there with a midnight street party? Plans are afoot, and I am waiting on the details.

In New Jersey, momentum seems to be building for two key projects, One is a much better route across the Meadowlands, from Jersey City to Newark, that will be called the Essex and Hudson Greenway. It’s gone from concept to the start of a feasibility study in less than a year, which is just amazing. The other is an off-road road from the Middlesex Greenway in Edison to the Raritan River in Highland Park, on the other side of New Brunswick. That would then link with the D&R Canal towpath. Middlesex County appears to be serious about this, so let’s see how long it takes.

Pennsylvania has 10 East Coast Greenway projects under construction this year (one of them is already done!), and another nine are in planning and engineering or ready for construction next year. One is the extension of the Schuylkill River Trail to Bartram’s Garden. There are projects planned in every county from the New Jersey line to the Delaware line, though I don’t know how much easier an off-road ride from Trenton to Philadelphia will become without more work.

In Delaware, there’s just been the groundbreaking for a trail close to 9 miles long connecting Wilmington to New Castle that will replace a hellish 9 miles of roadway.

A few developments away from the Connecticut-to-Delaware corridor:

Rhode Island voters just passed a $35 million green bond that includes $10 million for bike paths.
Washington D.C. has just about finished a 9-mile route along the south side of Anacostia River that the East Coast Greenway considers its complementary route. Still to work out is the link back to the National Mall. But when I look at the overall plan for the Anacostia River Walk, I understand the construction boom in Southeast that I saw from the highway on the way back from Raleigh. Trails are an ammenity and help bring economic development!
Florida is spending $25 million annually on trails, and East Coast Greenway segments are priorities.

Connecticut’s trails east of Hartford

We finally got off the Farmington trails and explored the Hop River Trail and Airline Trail South.

Day 3 in Connecticut — we finally got off the Farmington trails and headed east of Hartford. There are a series of trails — the Charter Oak Greenway, the Hop River Trail, Airline Trail North and Airline Trail South. All but Airline South are part of the East Coast Greenway “spine” and together take you almost to Rhode Island. (The Airline trails get their name from an old train line that connected Boston and New York as if a line was drawn through the air.)

There’s work being done here too — we saw construction along I-384 for a trail that will connect the Charter Oak and Hop River trails (and eventually include some costly bridges). Barb, one of my ECG buddies and a trail angel, told me another project is tying the northern end of the Hop River Trail in Vernon (where it’s no longer part of the ECG) to the Charter Oak Greenway in Manchester. And it’s all because of this man, a true trails advocate and East Coast Greenway champion. Thank you, Bill O’Neill.

We rode a 39.5-mile loop of trail and road from Bolton Notch State Park to Willimantic, then to Hebron and back to the car. Unlike the Farmington trails, these trails were stone-dust trails and every once in a while a bit bumpy on our road bikes. Still — road bikes with skinny tires!

Continue reading “Connecticut’s trails east of Hartford”

Closing the trail gaps in Connecticut

A big gap on the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail will be closed by the end of the year. More is in the works.

An inspiring part of our three days in Connecticut was seeing gaps in the trails being closed. And East Coast Greenway advocates are a big reason.

We had heard that work was being done to turn the 4.7-mile section of railway line into more of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail north of where we parked on Cheshire on the second day of our Connecticut exploration. So of course we had to look.

There’s no sign of anything in the first section, between Cornwall Avenue and West Main Street; in fact, there is at least one active business. Willow Street, just around the corner, is a quiet road, so easy to ride (but no sidewalk or shoulder, so less easy to walk). And this newspaper article says the work will be done next year.

But a section beginning at West Main Street in Cheshire was just about done. The new crosswalk signals and barriers to keep motorists from getting on the trail still had to go up. A fence was up, but that wasn’t stopping locals from taking their bikes on the trail. One man told us about a new 70-car parking lot (I predict it will be busy) and solar-powered restrooms along the new section.

Further up, a section needed a second coat of asphalt.

And at the very northern end of this section, the trail was marked out but had absolutely no asphalt. But it’s all supposed to be finished this year.

Finally, the southernmost leg in New Haven is in construction too.

The bottom line: Best I can tell, come the end of the year, all but less than a mile of a 26-mile stretch of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail from New Haven (accessible by train from New York) to Southington (all part of the East Coast Greenway) will be complete.

Fantastic!

And two breweries apparently are coming to Southington — could there be any better bicyclist magnet beyond that ice cream shop at the edge of the trail?

After that, there’s still one big remaining gap to close on this trail — essentially between all this construction in Southington to where we parked on Friday. And planning has started for that. Then it will be easy to bike traffic-free from the Connecticut coastline to Massachusetts.

The bad news is it’s supposed to be five years until it’s done. Planning alone will take two.

In the meantime, it looked like you could ride on the road. You just need to feel comfortable with traffic. We just didn’t have time to try it out.

Here’s a full “state of the trails” report from the Farmington Valley Trails Council on what done and what’s not, including the Massachusetts section we barely saw.

There is an organized ride this Saturday (June 25) leaving from New Haven if you want to try out the entire 56-mile stretch. A grand opening ceremony is planned for that new piece in Cheshire.

Given what we saw, once finished, this new section should be popular with Connecticut residents. It hopefully lure in plenty of out-of-staters too, bringing in some extra tourism dollars.

We saw more trail construction east of Hartford, but that’s part of my next post.

Discovering New Haven

The East Coast Greenway took us to New Haven pizza.

On our second day in Connecticut, we biked more of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail, heading from Cornwall Avenue and Willow Street in Cheshire 16 miles south to New Haven and then back. It’s all part of the East Coast Greenway.

Here’s some of what struck me:

The parking lot we used was full before 10 a.m., and the overflow lot (really a local business’s lot) was pretty full too. (And when we came back late in the afternoon, the main lot was still pretty full, just with different cars)

The trail was heavily used by young and old, thin and fat, people on bikes and people on foot. The entire stretch was paved and while not as wide as the widest sections of the Farmington River Trail, still plenty wide. We did see a dirt section on the side for those who wanted to skip asphalt.

Because it was hot and sunny, the heavy shade along much of the trail was greatly appreciated. The downside of biking through the woods is that you don’t see as many businesses, so the economic impact isn’t quite as obvious as in Collinsville, for example.

And Connecticut drivers are generally polite. Although we had stop signs at intersections, so many of them stopped for us.

Once in New Haven, we rode to the coast, past the Puerto Rican food trucks parked along a fairly busy road and through a small nature preserve before deciding to head back to the New Haven Green. Of course we found some East Coast Greenway signs — thank you, Rob Dexter. (We also found Rob in between two bike rides he was doing that day, so I got to see another person from the Week-a-Year rides.)

At this stage, you’re probably thinking “You’re in New Haven. What about the pizza? How could you of all people pass up trying New Haven pizza?”

Of course I didn’t. One of our first stops in New Haven was Frank Pepe’s, one of the oldest New Haven Neopolitan-style pizzerias. It has a super-thin crust and comes on a sheet pan lined with wax paper. Personally, I thought it was pretty similar to a Trenton tomato pie (I guess the difference is sauce first, then cheese, instead of cheese, then sauce like in Trenton). Fwiw, the typical New York pizza has a slightly thicker, chewier crust.

Here’s something we found that we haven’t seen elsewhere. Clive said it really did have a birch taste:

Connecticut’s gold-star trails

We spent three days riding our bikes on Connecticut trails. Day 1 was the Farmington River Trail and part of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail.

I’ve been hearing a lot about the Connecticut section of the East Coast Greenway over the past two years and knew I wanted to see these trails. But after I was put in charge of the ride-on-your-own section of a “Discover the East Coast Greenway” event in NYC a group of us organized in April, I knew I had to go.

So we took a three-day weekend and toured the trails with the help of some ECG buddies.

WOW!

We just loved them. (One of my nieces might call them “epic”.) Judging by how busy they were, so do lots of other people. And then to see gaps being closed along the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail (which runs from New Haven into Massachusetts) — well, this is why I ride in support of the East Coast Greenway.

Continue reading “Connecticut’s gold-star trails”

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