This photo sums up why we need the East Coast Greenway.
This photo, taken by another rider today, sums up why we need greenways — off-road trails like the East Coast Greenway that serve cyclists, runners, walkers and others of all ages and ability.
Look at that intersection. Wide roads, no bike lanes. How many would cross it on a bike? And with children?
And once we got past intersections like that, we were on roads that sometimes had tiny shoulders.
If people speeding by in their cars thought all these cyclists were nuts, would you blame them?
One rider in our group is a distributor for a major bike brand and says he’s not surprised by the poor bicycle infrastructure around here. Even in beach towns, there’s not a culture of bicycling to the beach, unlike, say. the Jersey Shore. And he doesn’t have a bike store between Wilmington and Savannah selling his brand aside from one in Charleston.
What did look familiar? People trying to slow down traffic in front of their homes. Beyond those commercially available red “Drive like your kids live here” signs, these two homemade signs in front of one house caught my eye (but probably not those speeding):
And today’s ride? All roads. The plan had been to ride East Coast Greenway trails in Wilmington, then follow the beach south to Fort Fisher, catch a ferry for a few miles to Southport and then make a big loop inland to cross a river before heading to the beach again.
Many of us were looking forward to the ferry ride. Only the state transportation department, which runs the ferry, decided that today and tomorrow (Columbus Day) was a perfect time for maintenance. And we couldn’t come up with a replacement service. So no ferry ride. (Shades of my first WAY tour in 2014 when the boats didn’t show then either!) Instead we were shuttled across a bicycle-unfriendly bridge and started riding a few miles outside Wilmington.
The flip side is that today was a 62-mile day instead of the 70 miles that had been billed. It was hot and humid, so a bit less is good as those of us from up north adjust to Carolina weather. Got to keep remembering to reapply sunscreen, including under the edge of my bike shorts (shorts ride up when you sit and that’s where the rash from too much sun shows up).
A 15-mile route from Riverside, NJ, to the Roebling Museum.
This is part of an old Roebling factory, the company that built the Brooklyn Bridge. The East Coast Greenway goes past it — now on the road but eventually (I hope) on an off-road trail. That would be the Delaware River Heritage Trail, which is slowly pushing south from Trenton and Bordentown, and then up from Camden. It would be an alternative to riding from Trenton to Philadelphia on the Pennsylvania side. (And it’s no secret what I think of the current route.)
Like the mini bridge outside the Roebling Museum? Stopping for a proper museum visit next time! Several picnic tables too, so it’s a prime rest stop.
We decided to explore from Riverside, following the Delaware River north. Our route took us through small communities and shuttered factory sites, like a large one for U.S. Pipe, once the largest employer in Burlington. (here’s some history about the company in New Jersey.)What will become of this prime riverfront location … and how much environmental cleanup is needed? Can gentrification reach this far, aided by transit? Waterfront condos one day? Or a new warehouse? The RiverLine light rail (which tracked our route) is right there … but so is a freight line. I just hope there is public access to the river (and yes, a trail).
Today, the 15 miles to Roebling are almost all on road; the East Coast Greenway route has a brief trail moment through a park, and we tested out a riverside walkway with a sign ordering you to walk your bike past an apartment building, per city ordinance. While there is usually a shoulder (I would not call them bike lanes), this is a route for people comfortable riding on roads, even on a Sunday morning. As we rode through an industrial area, I wondered about truck traffic during the week. One had a multi-use path out front… that dead-ended in the grass.
For those who don’t want to bike back (and yes, we did bike) or suffer mechanical trouble, there’s always the RiverLine. We were never that far from a stop.
Here’s a bonus for those who don’t ride on a Sunday: Junior’s Cheesecake. We biked past the company bakery in Burlington (sorry, New York). There’s an outlet there, apparently selling both “perfect and imperfect” cakes. Of course, you’d then have to balance it on your bike. Or be with a large group of hungry cyclists who can eat it all at once. (We went for a Portuguese restaurant in Riverside with scarily huge portions.)
Looks like there will be competition for a one-star rating.
The East Coast Greenway’s big fundraising ride starts in a couple of weeks, and I’m one of 40 cyclists on it.
After a briefing about the route from Wilmington, N.C., to Savannah, I’m rethinking that one-star rating I just gave the Trenton-to-Philadelphia stretch. Should I raise it to two? At least busy roads there had shoulders or bike lanes. Not so along similar parts of this year’s Week-A-Year route, it appears. That may make it more deserving of the bottom rating.
No shoulders on major roads surprises me. I get no snow means not needing a place to push it to, but surely cars break down there too and need to be moved to the side of the road. We’ll be cycling in the “Low Country,” so plenty of water and marshes means few road options for us. Not many options for the route. We clearly will be riding in groups for extra visibility and taking shuttles as needed. We’ve had bad roads before. At least it will be flat. And yes, there are some trails. Just not enough. (Note to my mother: I promise I’ll be safe.)
The good news is this isn’t the final word. Much of the route is considered interim as the East Coast Greenway works to create an off-road route safe for all, and hopefully South Carolina in particular will make big improvements. For the record, South Carolina ranks 44th in bike friendliness, according to the League of American Bicyclists. Note that Adventure Cycling’s route along the Atlantic Coast goes much further inland at this point, bypassing Charleston (though there is a spur route) and Savannah.
But what tourist wants to miss those cities? Exactly.
The East Coast Greenway is all about connecting cities. As I’ve said many times, that is much tougher than sticking to rural America. It’s also where more people live and need choice in how they get around. The work done by this group combined with local and state advocates is vital!
I’m going to be blunt: This stretch of the East Coast Greenway is desperately in need of improvement — i.e. trails. I’m told that’s coming, but for now this is a one-star section.
This is a saner section.
Three of us rode from Trenton to Philadelphia on Sept. 15, 2017 as part of the East Coast Greenway’s River Relay that covers the entire 3,000-mile stretch: 25 years of East Coast Greenway, 50-plus rivers and one Greenway.
This was all urban riding– no trail, no suburban residential streets, nothing to give you a break from city biking and city traffic. To be honest, our “Portugal to India” ride, from Newark to Metro Park and then onward to New Brunswick was more pleasant and more interesting — and that’s not something most people associate with North Jersey, let alone Newark.
We started out from downtown Trenton aiming for the Calhoun Street Bridge. At one point, I thought we were headed for a busy highway, but the road forks in an odd spot and dropped us on the bridge. Chaotic Jersey road design and signposting, I thought…
At least the view of the Delaware River from the bridge was pretty:
On the Pennsylvania side, we picked up state Bike Route E (as in East Coast Greenway) … but don’t be fooled. This is hardly great bike infrastructure. Oh, it started out OK. West Trenton Road looks like a main suburban road, but it’s wide and there wasn’t much traffic. After several miles, though, we were on State Road 413. This is for hardy cyclists only; think wide, major road with strip malls, plus crossing an intersection with a road leading to Interstate 276 and of course traffic coming off the interstate too. Drivers saw us coming, so nothing scary happened. I know this is the reality of a route that connects cities rather than sticking to the middle of nowhere — there is always a bad stretch. The good news is that the route will look very different in four years when some projects are finished (pardon my cynicism when I bet it will be 6). Certainly the map showing the future ECG route looks much more appealing.
2019 UPDATE: The remaining obstacles on the D&L trail between Morrisville (opposite Trenton) and Bristol have been removed this year. It’s now a clear trail for 10 miles — and you stay off what we experienced above. Here’s a report of our 2018 experience.
I just kept wondering who’d get a flat from the junk on the shoulder.
So I was quite surprised when Bristol Pike — U.S. Highway 13 — turned out to be far nicer. For one, it was freshly paved. And there was a bike lane. It even felt fairly sane. I thought we’d be cruising.
But then one of us got a flat. Yes, of course it was the rear wheel. We pulled over on the sidewalk in front of a used car dealership to swap out the inner tube. The two men working there wandered over to see what was up. They nicely offered us water, use of the restrooms … but also gave us a different perspective on Philadelphia.
Business is slow, I heard, and it’s due to the bad economy — in this case, too many drugs. And these days, drugs means opioids and heroin. We apparently had just gone through a town with lots of (unregulated) halfway houses for addicts who had gone through substance-abuse treatment and were not far from a north Philadelphia neighborhood that he described as the epicenter of the opioid crisis. He never went into Philly without his gun, and he warned us to be careful. We thought he was a bit OTT and we certainly weren’t going to go find ourselves some guns.
Not that our route went through that part of town anyway. We stayed pretty close to the Delaware River but only once actually saw it. That was when we did our special Relay task and collected our sample of Delaware River water in Pleasant Hill Park. We found a bit of trail … but then it’s blocked by the Police Department not wanting anyone near its gun range (not that we heard any shots). Also OTT. This says safety upgrades would mean that section would open in the summer of 2017, but obviously that hasn’t happened. (We did make it through that blocked section in 2018, known as the Baxter Trail — it’s now open on weekends only in the summer.)
Collecting water samples from the Delaware River
Apparently there are a number of unconnected trail segments along the northern Delaware River, and I’d hoped we’d have been able to ride some of them. But nope. Gaps supposedly will be closed in the coming years. Certainly the people of north Philadelphia deserve more trails as well as access to the waterfront. And the East Coast Greenway would have a more direct and scenic route that also would serve riders of all abilities.
And so we stuck to city roads, biggish ones like Torresdale, Frankford and Aramingo, moving away from the waterfront and then back toward it, finally reaching hipster Northern Liberties. Then it was onto the bike lanes on Spring Garden to the Schuylkill River and the train home. Total mileage, including getting to and from our train station and then from the Trenton station to the start: 44 miles.
Did we miss something that would have made the ride more rewarding?
Thank you, East Coast Greenway and Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia, for working to create new trails and upgrade the route. Thanks, too, for the bike lanes we found! And thank you Riverfront North for doggedly working to make the waterfront accessible to all from the Philadelphia county line to the Frankford Boat Launch, and the Delaware River Waterfront for picking up the trail work there headed south.
“Trenton Makes, the World Takes” — or at least it used to be that way
What’s is like if you stay on the New Jersey side down to Camden and then cross the Delaware using the Ben Franklin Bridge? Here’s how to do it.
A historical and family-friendly bike ride from Rocky Hill to Griggstown, home of that “notorious Tory spy” John Honeyman. Or was he really a spy for George Washington.
Time for another history-themed bike ride in New Jersey.
We discover more of the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail on a 20-mile ride that includes a few miles on the East Coast Greenway.
One of my longer bike rides over the past week was along part of the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail, a non-quite-finished 22-mile loop off the East Coast Greenway just south of Princeton.
We usually take the D&R Canal towpath (part of the East Coast Greenway) for about 5 miles to the turnoff to Brearley House and then ride past the Lawrenceville School and through Mercer Meadows, a big county park — basically going clockwise on the loop. This time we decided to go counterclockwise because we knew there was a section through the Carson Road Woods that we’d never been on.
Before we got to that, though, we found another section that’s been finished — a sidepath along Province Line Road. It’s the red dotted line in the upper right of this map, and its completion means the trail is 88% done. (See the full map here.)
I don’t have any photos, unfortunately, and it really seems like nothing glamorous — basically a wide asphalted sidewalk right at the side of the road, with no little strip of green acting as a divider. But it’s a key connection on a road that’s busy at rush hour and where motorists go fast at any time. One person I know grumbles about the drainage grates running across the sidepath every so often … and I could do without the rocks around them (probably also for drainage — UPDATE: driving by, that looks like it’s been covered). But it’s a big step.
After all that excitement, we rode the trail on the edge of a Bristol Myers-Squibb campus to reach Carson Road Woods. It has five miles of marked trails, including one mile that’s part of the LHT. Our route felt more meadow-y than the heavily wooded Maidenhead Meadows trail, another new section (for us, at least) near the start (the green dots leading to the parking sign on the map).
After Carson Roads Woods we rode through a neighborhood to Rosedale Road, where we’d seen an LHT sign but had no idea where the trail was. Now we know — neighborhood roads, then trail.
Had we continued on the LHT, we’d have gone through the ETS site, using a trail we’ve previously ridden. Instead, we turned toward Princeton and then home.
All in all, a 20-mile day. Essentially flat, but definitely one for the hybrids.
We hit part of the Eastern Trail in Maine and went off-route for hipster ice cream in Biddeford. (Hipster in the nicest way, of course.)
You might remember my not-so-patient wait for ice cream during last year’s week-long ride along the East Coast Greenway in Maine. Because of course you should eat ice cream while biking whenever possible.
We were back in Maine this month to visit friends. They said they’d be up for a bike ride …. so off we went on the Eastern Trail, another part of the East Coast Greenway. The section from Kennebunk to Biddeford is hard-packed, not asphalt, and in one spot a bit muddy after some rain. Glad we had the hybrids. It switched to quiet road through Biddeford and into Saco, where we stopped for lunch at a cute cafe with a deck. I, however, was more interested in ice cream. Not on the menu. Fortunately the waitress was a connoisseur and pointed us in the right direction.
So once everyone was fortified with real food (and my “side” of pulled pork had to be the equivalent of a breadless sandwich — somewhere between a quarter pound and half pound), off we headed to Biddeford and and the Sweetcream Dairy.
Our Maine friends and their ice cream
Oh, hipsters. This place is a registered dairy and milk processing plant. Can your favorite place in Brooklyn, Portland or wherever claim that? It batch-pasteurizes its milk. Locally sourced, of course. Provenance on the website. Maine herbs and fruits. I’d say it’s mostly farm-to-table for the ice cream crowd. And located in a repurposed mill — more hipster points.
“Mostly” locally sourced because how do you get local chocolate? Lemon and poppyseed? Key lime? In that true hipster way, it was well-curated — no 31 flavors and all that. Yet I was tempted by so many — rhubarb sorbet, perhaps?
A couple of samples later, I picked the dark chocolate. But there’s a twist: It was vegan. So not me. No idea what the secret non-dairy ingredient was, but it was awesome. I went for the kiddie size and it was so rich, I really could have used one of the citrus flavors to offset that. (Wonder if they’d do a half-and-half in a cup?) A single scoop would have been too much.
Sweetcream, get yourself a sign to and from the Eastern Trail!
All in all, nearly a 20-mile ride. One day I’ll ride the rest of the trail, from Portland down to the New Hampshire border. Stopping for ice cream, of course.
This is the coolest bike ride of the year so far — pedaling with George Washington (OK, a reenactor) and about 80 “troops” from the site of Battle of Trenton to the Battle of Princeton. All that was missing (beyond Alexander Hamilton) were some Redcoats in hot pursuit (even if that last part isn’t historically accurate). Next year!
This 10-mile “Chasing George” ride (with accompanying historical talks) was organized by the Historical Society of Princeton with help from a number of organizations, including a few of us representing the East Coast Greenway who escorted one company of “soldiers” from the Trenton train station to the Douglass House, site of a Council of War after the Second Battle of Trenton and the starting point for this ride. Some 37 of us took off behind General Washington, followed by 32 others who took a wider view of history. They had ridden out from just south of Princeton to Washington Crossing (site of the Dec. 25, 1776 crossing of the Delaware River) and then onto Trenton.
Yeah, the kids loved it. They made sure they were up front with George!
Our route wasn’t historically accurate; we took the D&R Canal towpath (part of the East Coast Greenway), which wasn’t built until the 1830s. The General and his troops had swung wide to give the Brits the slip that night. We ended up near the Princeton Battlefield as part of Princeton’s annual Ciclovia. Too bad it’s held on the edge of town, so attendance is pretty sparse.
But what was so important about these battles? These are the 10 days that saved the American Revolution. And it really was almost at an end. Washington had suffered one loss after another in the New York area and had essentially fled through New Jersey to just across the Delaware in Pennsylvania. Much of the Continental Army had signed up for one year and could go home at the end of the year. And on Christmas night, the army crossed the Delaware, despite the snow and the cold, and surprised the Hessians in Trenton on the morning of the 26th. They won, shocking the British. (And no, the Hessians weren’t drunk). Soldiers stayed on. There was a second Battle of Trenton on Jan. 2 and Washington’s forces held on as night fell. The British planned to finish them off in the morning, but Washington and his troops slipped out of town on a back road heading for Princeton and places north. British soldiers heading south to Trenton spotted them as dawn broke, and there you have the Battle of Princeton. Another win for Washington, and the Revolution was saved.
Want more? Read “1776” if you haven’t already. And catch the re-enactment of the crossing every Christmas Day, take part in Patriots Week in Trenton the week after Christmas and then watch for the Historical Society of Princeton’s own Battle of Princeton events just after that.
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.
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!
Chris’s bike matches the East Coast Greenway colors! (OK, also, Holiday Inn’s)
For another perspective on our hurricane-shortened adventure on the East Coast Greenway, read this blog. The wind and rain is fierce in North Carolina today — we all know the ride had to end when it did. Here’s to sunshine next October as we head from the Wilmington area to … Savannah?
Once again, thank you to everyone who supported the East Coast Greenway through my fundraising efforts. I hope you’ll go enjoy your own bike adventure.
This photo, taken by another rider today, sums up why we need greenways — off-road trails like the East Coast Greenway that serve cyclists, runners, walkers and others of all ages and ability.
This is part of an old Roebling factory, the company that built the Brooklyn Bridge. The East Coast Greenway goes past it — now on the road but eventually (I hope) on an off-road trail. That would be the 
Exploring by bicycle 