Where's the bike path?
It's a frequently asked question,
especially by parents who want a car-free place to bike with their children.
Especially if they've enjoyed the Minuteman Bikeway from Cambridge to Bedford,
or the Cape Cod Rail Trail, or the Norwottuck Trail in Northampton and Amherst,
or the East Bay Bike Path from Providence to Bristol, R.I.
The short
answer is: There is no paved bike path in Worcester, nor anywhere nearby. The
closest things in Central Massachusetts are the first mile of the North Central
Pathway in Gardner, which was paved in 1997, and the Central Mass. Rail Trail in
West Boylston, which so far is a one-mile stretch surfaced with compacted stone
dust.
The long answer is that there are about 60 recreational paths
on the drawing board across the state, which is criss-crossed by unused rail
beds, and money for some of them is inching through the bureaucratic pipeline,
but these things get political, and they take time. Decades, sometimes.
Before anyone picks up a shovel, much less lays asphalt, there are
feasibility studies and environmental studies and engineering studies and
negotiations to acquire property easements or rights-of-way and intermunicipal
agreements and town meeting votes and campaigns for matching funds and design
reviews and contract bids and local permits, and the list goes on. These are
miniature highway projects, really.
The Blackstone River Bikeway, for
example, has been plotted on paper for a good 10 years now. Grants and contracts
have been awarded for preliminary work on some segments, but the
Providence-to-Worcester project hasn't reached the construction stage in
Massachusetts. The segments snaking under the Massachusetts Turnpike interchange
at Route 146 in Millbury may be the first to be constructed but are not slated
to open for at least another year or two.
To repeat word for word
what was printed in this space 14 months ago, because the upshot has not
changed: Where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, not one inch of the
26-mile bike path in Massachusetts is a reality -- unless you count stretches of
existing roads, such as Millbury's North Main Street (Route 122A), that
eventually will have signs labeling their shoulders part of the bike route. That
is not to say that signs alone make a road any more desirable for cycling than
it is now.
Much of the $6 million in federal money earmarked for the
Blackstone River Bikeway in 1998 has not come through, for lack of a 20 percent
match from the state, said Michael Creasy, executive director of the Blackstone
River Valley National Heritage Corridor Commission. This month the commission
applied for $5 million in federal funds -- with no match required -- to build
6.5 miles of the route from the Rhode Island line into Uxbridge.
Meanwhile, Creasy said, work is urgently needed to acquire land rights for the
bikeway. "We've seen parcels that were projected to be part of the bikeway lost
to subdivisions already," he said.
Rhode Island opened a three-mile
segment of the bikeway in Lincoln in 1998 and is scheduled to start building the
adjacent 3 miles in Cumberland soon, according to Lisa Lawless, principal civil
engineer in the R.I. Department of Environmental Management. A preconstruction
conference is scheduled for this week, and the segment may take two years to
complete, she said.
For a color map of the planned bikeway and a road
route from Providence to Worcester that can be used now, send $3 to East Coast
Greenway Alliance (http://www.greenway.org/), 135 Main St.,
Wakefield, RI 02879.
Elsewhere, similarly painstaking progress is
being made on the Assabet River Rail Trail (www.arrtinc.org/ ),
a 12-mile route from Marlboro to Acton on an abandoned MBTA line. After seven
years of planning, a gravel base has been built for about half a mile of the
path in Marlboro, off Fairbanks Boulevard, south of Fitchburg Street.
Gardner and Winchendon recently acquired the railroad right-of-way for the
aforementioned North Central Pathway, an eight-mile route. Money has been
allotted to get the ball rolling on a 13-mile bike path in Ware and Hardwick.
And design money has been granted for a 26-mile trail loop in Milford,
Hopkinton, Ashland, Framingham, Sherborn and Holliston.
In short,
things are looking up in Massachusetts, which has lagged other states in
converting old railroads to recreational use, said Craig Della Penna, New
England representative for the Rails to Trails Conservancy and author of "Great
Rail-Trails of the Northeast."
"Change is in the wind," Della Penna
said, since Andrew Natsios replaced James Kerasiotes as Big Dig czar. "Mr.
Kerasiotes won't be down for breakfast anymore. I suspect he had something to do
with the fact that trails were not a high priority."
But obstacles
remain, he said. For one, the state Architectural Review Board wants all trails
built with federal money from the Transportation Equity Act of the 21st Century
to be paved so people in wheelchairs can use them. Creating a paved path in
Massachusetts under TEA 21 about $250,000 per mile, compared to $100,000 per
mile for stone dust, which if properly installed and maintained is fine for
wheelchairs, Della Penna said.
Moreover, pavement alienates
equestrians, and trail users of all kinds need to band together, not battle each
other, if they want trails built, Della Penna said.
Trail proponents
also worry that the revenue-strapped MBTA, which owns most of the unused rail
corridors east of Interstate 495, could sell off unused railroad land piecemeal,
a real threat under the agency's newly quasi-privatized real estate management.
"We the people already bought the land once, in the 1970s, for the MBTA," Della
Penna said. "We shouldn't have to buy it again."
Under scrutiny from
the Senate Post Audit and Oversight Committee, led by Sen. Cheryl Jacques,
D-Needham, the MBTA has agreed to re-examine its policies for leasing unused
rights of way for bike paths.
Once they get built, these paths become
hugely popular with cyclists, joggers, walkers, in-line skaters and others.
Fears of crime and eroding property values evaporate, according to Rails to
Trails.
But government bureaucrats aren't going to rush to get the
old railroads cleared and resurfaced, with safe grade crossings and landscaped
buffers and so forth, unless people clamor for it. So if you're looking for a
bike path around here, pick a project and get involved. Here's where to call:
Assabet River Rail Trail: Jeff Richards, 978-464-5581
Blackstone River
Valley National Heritage Corridor: 401-762-0250
Hardwick Area Conservation
Trust: Rick Romano, 413-477-6021
Ware Office of Community Development: Paul
Hills, 413-967-7136
Wachusett Greenways: Ed Yaglou, 978-355-2539
Gardner
Office of Community Development: 978-630-4011
~~~
TIP OF THE
HELMET -- to Woosta Pizza, 8 Franklin St., Worcester, for using a cycle
instead of a car for lunchtime deliveries downtown. The heavy three-speed trike,
custom built by the Worksmen company in Long Island, N.Y., cost about $600, said
pizza shop owner Mike Hill, and is saving him $20 to $25 a week in parking
tickets.
Cycling door to door downtown is much faster than driving,
Hill said. To get to Worcester Medical Center, for example, he can cut across
the common and scoot down Commercial Street rather than taking Franklin Street
to Worcester Center Boulevard. Moreover, the bike is fun. "The employees fight
over who gets to ride it," Hill said.