East Coast Greenway Link to be Completed in Union County

The following is a press release from Union County announcing that funds are now available to complete the Greenway link through Springfield and neighboring towns:

Another piece in the 3,000-mile jigsaw puzzle—the East Coast Greenway stretching from Maine to Florida—will soon drop into place in Union County.

When the Greenway is complete, it will provide an off-road route from Calais, Maine, to Key West, Fla., a 2,950-mile lowland Appalachian Trail  that will weave through nearly every major city along the East Coast.

From families looking for a Sunday outing to those seeking an interstate adventure, the trail is intended to offer a safe way to bike along the Eastern Seaboard, just as the Appalachian Trail provides a path to hike the region.

In New Jersey, the Greenway weaves a 92-mile serpentine path from the Delaware to the Hudson River, through 27 towns in six counties. A good part of the southern portion uses the Delaware & Raritan Canal towpath, from Trenton to South Bound Brook.

In Union County, the East Coast Greenway enters the county at the Rahway-Woodbridge  border and then follows  the Rahway River up through Winfield to Cranford.   While a good part of the route either winds through Union County parkland and quiet nearby streets, the route's designers were forced to put cyclists onto the heavily travelled Kenilworth Boulevard where it passes between Nomahegan and Lenape Park on the Cranford-Kenilworth border.

But that will all change soon.  A $500,000 grant from the state Department of Transportation and $170,000 from the Union County Open Space, Recreation and Historic Preservation Trust Fund will make it possible for a 1.45-mile path to be constructed through Lenape and Black Brook Parks, passing through sections of Cranford, Kenilworth, Springfield, Union.

With bids recently approved by the Union County Board of Freeholders, county officials hope construction starts in about a month.  It is also hoped that much of the work can be completed by the end of September, before fall rains make the ground too soft to get equipment into the area, said Al Faella, Union County's director of parks and community renewal.

Freeholder Deborah Scanlon, the board's liaison to parks, said she was thrilled to see the project going forward, and not just because of what it does for the Greenway.

"The Lenape--Black Brook path, combined with the completion of a missing link in Mountainside will make it possible for bicyclists and pedestrians to go from the southern edge of the Watchung Reservation to the eastern edge of the Galloping Hill Golf Course on a route that runs almost entirely through county parkland," Scanlon said.

"In a county as densely developed as Union County is, that is no small feat," she said. "And the fact that you're getting people off Kenilworth Boulevard--that's a big deal."

East Coast Greenway officials were also thrilled with the news from Union County.

"This is fantastic. To finally utilize that park. It's just fantastic," said Mike Kruimer of Edison, one of the coordinators of the Greenway in New Jersey.

Kruimer said that another mile-and-a-half section of the Greenway in the Trenton area is also about to open and that when it does, nearly half of the route through New Jersey will be off-road or on dedicated bike lanes.

During the past year, sections of the Greenway have also been added in Maine, Florida, Maryland and Massachusetts, putting close to 25 percent of the overall route now off-road, Kruimer said.

In neighboring Essex County, officials are expected to go out to bid soon for a section of the Greenway that will run between Branch Brook and Wequahic parks, according to Greenway officials.

Taking the path through Lenape and Black Brook parks presents some special challenges, Faella said. Because the area is in a flood plain, most of the construction work needs to get done in the summer months.

"In the fall, it gets wet real fast out there," Faella said.

In addition, because the flood plain is as broad as it is, in the two locations where the path crosses waterways, the bridges will be unusually long, with the bridge across the Black Brook 130 feet and the bridge across a tributary of the Rahway River,  110 feet.

The bridges will be very similar to the bridges that were installed at Nomahegan Park in Cranford several years ago, Faella said.