Greenway Connects

Hartford area towns decide best route for nationwide bicycle infrastruc-

New England and Connecticut in general has a storied history when it comes to bicycles. The first patent for a bicycle was awarded to an Ansonia man over 150 years ago, and Columbia bikes, once manufactured out of Hartford, continued to be sold today. You can say it’s part of our “heritage,” as members of several Capitol area towns look to link the Bloomfield Greenway to the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail.

Pierre Lallement of Ansonia, and James Carroll of New Haven filed the earliest and only American patent application for the pedal-bicycle in April 1866, and the patent was awarded on November 20, 1866.

The Greenway, like so many other bicycle paths, is a former railway, in this case, the old Connecticut Western Railroad lines. It is less than 2 miles of trail between the towns of Bloomfield and Simsbury. In the listing for the trail on traillink, it is noted that the plan the whole time was to connect the Greenway from Hartford to the Farmington Canal Trail.

The Canal has been written about several times in the pages of CT&C –not simply because we here are fans of biking – but because it extends from New Haven all the way to the Massachusetts border and beyond.

Connecting to this massive piece of infrastructure is a no-brainer, and these towns, through the Capitol Region Council of Governments, is looking into how to best accomplish this task.

There are many common issues that bicycle and trail infrastructure run into. The primary issue is where car infrastructure and trail infrastructure meet. On the Canal Trail, there are still several miles where the trail diverges onto public roads, which is unfortunately not the safest option.

But the Greenway has other site-specific issues – namely the Farmington River and it’s environs. The different elevations can often be an issue for your everyday cyclist and a deterrent for those who simply want a nice place to walk.

In a piece written about the trail for the Hartford Courant, it appears that as many options have been rejected as have been considered.

Working through these issues will result in an amenity that will be cherished by people today and in future generations. A common refrain in CT&C – and even in this issue – younger generation prefer infrastructure that allows them to bike and/or walk to work. And so it goes that they’d like to bike for fun as well, going for stints on a weekend day as much as riding on a Monday morning.

All in all, this is going to eventually add up to something so much bigger than just a few miles here and there. The Bloomfield Greenway, the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail are part of the East Coast Greenway –over 3000 miles of trail from Florida to Maine. It’s only natural that we should be doing what we can to make it link up – it’s in our heritage.