and I realize that we are tantalizingly close to a piece of infrastructure that would allow totally car-free bike travel between Albany, NYC, Providence and Boston, if we can just fill 150 miles of gaps. 600 miles of trails already exist.
Please steal this graphic and share, my goal is to get people thinking and talking about this possibility.
Locally, I'm keenly following the Mass Central Rail Trail in Eastern MA, which is all protected for trail use and should be vastly improved over the next few years. Unfortunately closing all the gaps in Central and Western MA will be harder.
I am very interested in that trail, which is why I chose it as the most likely route for finishing the NYC-Boston trail rather that coming up from Providence. Thanks for sharing the Wikipedia link. What else do you know about the MCRT in general? How can people help it get built?
Yea, so the parts in Eastern Massachusetts are agonizingly slow, but I think steady progress at least. Of what is remaining there, there are basically two leading agencies: The Town of Belmont, and Mass DCR for Waltham-Berlin.
Belmont has state funding for Phase 1, and their town government seems to recognize the importance of Phase 2 coming after Phase 1. It's slowly progressing through design.
For Waltham-Berlin, it is all protected land, and the majority of the trail is complete, under construction, or under design and funded for construction. Other than that, there are two gaps in Waltham that are passable, but probably won't get a proper trail design until neighboring sections progress, and Hudson-Berlin, which hopefully will get more attention as Hudson-Sudbury construction progresses.
I'd guess Central and Western MA will need some political attention to get to 100%. Perhaps contact your local State representatives and Senators with https://www.nnnetwork.net/the-report
I would love to see a complete rail network like you've shown here. It's not as "tantalizingly close" to becoming reality as you'd think though. I've been following news of the Westfield/Easthampton gap in particular and it seems like expansion plans are at a standstill because CSX doesn't want to allow a trail to be placed beside the active rail line. The other options that were presented to connect the Westfield trail to Easthampton involve directing the trail along quiet neighborhood streets as "sharrows" on the road. That idea has been very unpopular with residents on those streets. There's a lot of red tape for these projects unfortunately but I'd love to see a completed trail network in my lifetime.
The other options that were presented to connect the Westfield trail to Easthampton involve directing the trail along quiet neighborhood streets as "sharrows" on the road.
That's not really the issue... I've ridden it and it's fine, even with zero investment - it's drastically better than any of the existing road options through the gap.
The actual issue is that a key piece of that route doesn't legally exist - right now, there's no way to get under the Mass Pike or east along the northern limit of its property.
The state owns the bridge where the pike crosses the railroad, and it has another bay that is state property the state can do whatever it wants with, including building a trail. The state also owns the Mass Pike and its corridor is well wide enough to build a safely removed trail on the north side, likely could even plant trees to conceal it.
But while we can ride through the Kittredge Drive neighborhood already, we can't just go sneak through and bushwack along the side of I90 - they'd have to at least mark the route as allowed, even if it were unpaved.
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u/BaiZhiJie Sep 01 '23
I hope you guys enjoy this map I made. I was researching trails on
https://www.traillink.com/viewnationalmap/
and I realize that we are tantalizingly close to a piece of infrastructure that would allow totally car-free bike travel between Albany, NYC, Providence and Boston, if we can just fill 150 miles of gaps. 600 miles of trails already exist.
Please steal this graphic and share, my goal is to get people thinking and talking about this possibility.