Greening the Way

A Highway Without Cars - Greening the Way

by Will Dean

Grid Magazine

Twenty-two percent of the Greenway is completed

nationally, which means that it is paved and free of motorized

vehicular traffic. Forty percent is complete in the mid-Atlantic

area, which includes New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New

York and Maryland.

It is possible to bike along a route laid out by the East Coast

Greenway Alliance (ECGA), the umbrella group that is organiz-

ing the entire effort, but it means a lot of travel on some often

very busy roads. The ECGA has a route available on its website

with tips on how to make the entire trip. Recently, a couple on

recumbent bikes completed the trail in 55 days.

However, the Greenway isn’t just for the long-distance trek-

ker; it’s designed for the everyday use of residents who live

along it. “It’s not only the tourist; it’s not only the weekend warrior;

it’s not only the recreational user—it’s also the commuters—

people can use it to go to work,” says Spencer Finch, who has

worked on Pennsylvania’s section of Greenway trails for the

Pennsylvania Environmental Council (PEC).

“We don’t have to convince anyone,” he insists. “It’s like any

trend—you have the early adopters and they’re already out

there, and unfortunately, those are some of the people getting

run over by cars and buses in accidents, but just in the past

few years we’ve seen a huge increase in people biking to work.

There’s a lot more people wanting to do it, but they’re scared

of competing for space with cars.”

For its proponents, the first step to encourage the use of a sys-

tem like the Greenway is to build it. To paraphrase the famous

line from Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will bike it.”

“When you start providing better services, like bike lanes

that are buffered from traffic, as they have in some parts of New

York, then you’ll get my mom and my little nieces and nephews

to go biking,” Finch says. “They’ll go bike to the store for some

milk, go bike to work, go bike to the park. It’ll happen. Where

you provide the services, people will use them.”

“You have to have a lot of patience,” says Finch. “You have

to be able to talk to a lot of different people and address their

concerns. Sometimes, though, people are already doing things

and tell us to go away, which is great.”

The benefits the Greenway can bring, though, are enough

to keep up the spirits of the faciliatators. In addition to the

travel elements, the trail creation is a way to bring improve-

ments to underserved areas. In North Philly, the trail will turn

abandoned industrial areas into green spaces, and includes

the creation of a new park in Tacony, the first added to the

Fairmount system in several decades.

read the full article at: http://gridphilly.com/assets/pdf/grid_2009_08.pdf