Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Cool Idea: The East Coast Greenway

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by

James A. Bacon
in

David Brickley, a 62-year-old lawyer and former state legislator in Prince William County, is spearheading local efforts to tie Prince William and Virginia into the 3,000-mile East Coast Greenway that runs from the Canadian border to Key West, Fla. The Manassas Journal Messenger has the story here.

The trail is a grassroots initiative working under the auspices of the non-profit East Coast Greenway Alliance to stitch together local owned and managed walking/biking trails. The Alliance website describes the greenway as:

The nation’s first long-distance urban trail system; a city-to-city transportation corridor for cyclists, hikers, and other non-motorized users. By connecting existing and planned trails, a continuous, safe, green route 3,000 miles long is being formed… It incorporates waterfront esplanades, park paths, abandoned railroad corridors, canal towpaths, and highway corridors, and in many areas it it temporarily follows streets and roads to link these completed trail sections together.

Already, 21 % of this route is along off-road trail and the aim is for it to be entirely off-road and traffic-free.

(Click here to see a map of the Virginia segment. Click on the map to view a larger, clearer image.)

I had never heard of this initiative before, but it sounds absolutely wonderful. What really impresses me is that the greenway is a private, grassroots effort. The federal government isn’t imposing this greenway on anyone. It isn’t taking anyone’s land. It isn’t hitting up taxpayers from other parts of the country to pay for the project. The greenway arises from the efforts and contributions of local governments and citizen groups. It may take longer to achieve the vision this way, but the citizenry will own the final results.

(Photo credit: East Coast Greenway. Shows Roosevelt Island, in the Potomac River between Washington, D.C., and Virginia. I’m not sure I’d want to cycle along this particular stretch of road — but it’s the only Virginia shot I could find.)

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5 responses to “Cool Idea: The East Coast Greenway”

  1. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    What a great concept.

    What a terrible execution.

    Not just the “site” in the photo but the whole route through Virginia.

    Putting route along in the I-95 / I-85 Corridor means:

    Noise,

    Competition for land with Autonomobile related uses,

    Assumes that someone who is walking or biking wants to take the shortest route from Maine to Key West.

    This route was laid out in the 20s to provide the most direct connection between the largest markets with the least grade to support long distance trucking. (See planning for the “National Inter-Regional Highway” system.)

    This is not Benton MacKaye for the 21st Century.

    There must be a hundred “favored routes” of those who now make this tirp, as there are for those who walk or bike from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

    A better choice would be to map all of those one can find and then support a network of routes and imporve them all.

    Something like this should start at the Community scale, be coordinated at the Regional scale and then laced together at the mulit-Regional scale.

    The route from Fredericksburg to the Outer Banks has some real promise.

    I will look at more of their web site and perhaps see more positive iteas.

    EMR

  2. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    There is good news:

    Virginia is by far the worst state.

    From Raliegh NC south and from the Federal District of Columbia north some of the route sings and much of it shows real thought.

    Too bad the Virginia comes in last.

    James A. Bowden love Old Growth Forests, perhaps he could help the Virginia team come up with a better route from Mt. Vernon to Richmond and then take the alternative route to the North Carolina border.

    EMR

  3. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    Great idea.

    There is plenty of land already owned by the government.

    In a wierd way – the subdivision builders have provided proffers thinking they have “ripped off” the government. They ceded land in flood plains (and other unbuildable areas to the county) as part of their efforts to get permission to build. The builders figured that nobody could build on that land so they could tell perspective buyers that it would remain undeveloped. They also told the buyer that the land, now owned by the county, would not be included as part of their property tax assessment base.

    So, counties like Fairfax have found themselves with plenty of undeveloped land running along rivers and creeks – expensive for road development, unusable for housing development, perfect for trail development.

    All the county needs to do is out the trails in the woods and connect them.

    A perfect example is Difficult Run park running from Great Falls Park to the W&O trail in Fairfax. The land is already owned by the county. There is a dirt trail unsuitable for anything other than horses. Time to flatten out the ridt tral, throw down some stone and call it an eco-friendly trail.

  4. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    The East Coast Greenway deserves everyone’s support.

    Richmond, as the juncture between the ECG and the Capital Trail greenway/bike trail to Williamsburg, has a lot of potential gain here.

    Forget the Virginia Performing Arts Center, this is what Richmond should concentrate on.

  5. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Groveton:

    Good points.

    I will try to find time to do a column on the good, the bad and the ugly of Community, New Urban Region and Interregional pedestrian and bikeway design.

    In the meantime, Anon 11:03 (or his father) may have had something to do with the 50s decision to bend I-85 to the east in North Carolina so that both I-95 and I-85 traffic funneled thourgh Richmond.

    The original INTERREGIONAL HIGHWAY plans drawn up following WW I upon which the Interstate and Defense Highway System is based had a lot better coverage. The IH plans also called for pure limited access between regions. Think what that would have done for human settlement patterns.

    The Richmond New Urban Region needs a great trail system. The East Coast Greenway needs a more robust Virginia presence than just runnning down the I-95 corridor to the North Carolina line.

    EMR

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