Plainville Greenway Alliance

For each of the last three years, a small group of cyclists has been riding for one week on the East Coast Greenway, this summer from Hartford to Philadelphia. Click  here  to view a short YouTube video of this ride.  The ECG passes just beneath the Big Gray Bridge (George Washington) and right next to the Little Red Lighthouse in NYC.   

Just found on the web: a short, but very positive opinion by the Courant publisher about closing the gap here in Plainville. Click here to view.

They are smiling because they probably know something is up. Something that has been a long time coming here in Connecticut - full scale official recognition of and support for the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail (FCHT) by State planners and transportation officials. These happy cyclists, posing on the Flower Bridge over the Farmington River in Simsbury, are using the trail to travel from Hartford to New Haven today at the start of a weeklong journey to Philadelphia. They are using the part of the FCHT that is designated as a portion of the East Coast Greenway from Simsbury to New Haven. Much of their journey will be on-road, especially the 9.1 mile gap from Farmington thru Plainville to Southington. But that will change in the future as we advocates working with State and local officials find new and creative ways to complete this jewel of a trail that, when complete, will be 80 miles long and connect with the incredible trail system in and around ...

Our Town Cyclists parade through downtown to promote trail By KAITLYN NAPLES   STAFF WRITER   About 30 bike riders joined Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Dan Esty in a 56-mile ride from New Haven to Southwick, Mass., two Saturdays ago, to promote the Farmington Canal  Heritage Trail.  “This is a great day to highlight the partnerships between government and town,” Esty said outside of Plainville’s Municipal Center where the riders stopped for a quick break in  their journey.  Mark Swanson, a member of Plainville’s Bicycle Friendly Committee, said he was happy to see the ride happening.  “It is exciting and nice to see the trail getting support from the state level,” Swanson said before joining the other riders. “This has been taking years and  years” to complete.  The Farmington Canal Heritage Trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, which runs from Florida to Maine. However, ...

EDITORIAL WED, 3 JUL 2013, Hartford, CT Courant By Tom Condon The Farmington Canal Heritage Greenway is the most important recreational asset developed in the state in the past two decades. Or so I thought, despite never having been on the trail south of Farmington. Saturday, I got to bike the southern corridor. The whole trail is terrific, or will be, when we get those pesky gaps filled in. Dan Esty, the commissioner of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, along with a bunch of hard-riding trail advocates, rode the trail from New Haven to Southwick, Mass. They were ginning up support for closing the last two breaks in the Connecticut portion of the 84-mile, multi-use trail that runs from New Haven to Northhampton, Mass. The gaps are a 4.7-mile breach in Cheshire and a nine-mile pause in Plainville. So, short press conferences were held in those communities. I rode as far as Simsbury, 40 miles or so. The trail is a fortuitous accident of history. It b...

Here's a bold new idea for routing the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail through downtown New Haven. If you look closely at the photo above, you'll see a space between the tracks and the open area sloping down from the abutment along State St.. That's a service drive that Friends of the New Haven Farmington Canal Greenway are proposing to the City. But the City is nearing completion of engineering work on a completely different route that must be built or risk losing existing (and hard to come by) funding. Read more about it here . This is one of those situations that could be "lose/lose". If the City stops completion of engineering documents so that construction bidding and contracting cannot begin by 31 AUG 2013, they lose the $7.6 Million in funding earmarked for completion of the trail from Hillhouse Ave./Temple St. to Long Wharf. As the article states, the route proposed by FNHFCG is fraught with uncertainty: will the USPS agree to grant an easement t...