Biking the Boston 'Burbs (Trails, MDC, & Towns beyond Hubway area)

I saw that Bedford town meeting narrowly voted down the article necessary to extend the Minuteman over the Reformatory Branch to the Concord town line. A majority of the attendees supported it, but not the two thirds required.
 
RandomWalk said:
I saw that Bedford town meeting narrowly voted down the article necessary to extend the Minuteman over the Reformatory Branch to the Concord town line. A majority of the attendees supported it, but not the two thirds required.
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fuckkkkkk why
 
I saw that Bedford town meeting narrowly voted down the article necessary to extend the Minuteman over the Reformatory Branch to the Concord town line. A majority of the attendees supported it, but not the two thirds required.
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While I agree that extending the path is the right thing, the unpaved Reformatory Branch is much more "fun" for me to ride since it's generally much less crowded than the paved portion of the trail.
 
fatnoah said:
While I agree that extending the path is the right thing, the unpaved Reformatory Branch is much more "fun" for me to ride since it's generally much less crowded than the paved portion of the trail.
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It's tough on my thin-wheeled, street bike. If I'm thinking of the right thing, it had a lot of mud, sand, roots, etc.
 
Blackbird said:
It's tough on my thin-wheeled, street bike. If I'm thinking of the right thing, it had a lot of mud, sand, roots, etc.
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I have a "hybrid" bike that's basically only good on streets or packed dirt/stone dust and it does ok on that path, though there are stretches with sand and roots that make it a bit more challenging. I used to live in the Longfellow Towers and my occasional "long ride" would be from there to the cafe at the end of the Reformatory Branch trail and then back again. The return trip is fun because it's a slight downhill for much of it.
 
It’s a nice 20+ mile round-trip ride, with only the obnoxious block of street ride in Bedford. However, giving up 90% state funding because a handful of folks want the dirt trail in the woods, is next-level NIMBY with a side of BANANA.
 
RandomWalk said:
It’s a nice 20+ mile round-trip ride, with only the obnoxious block of street ride in Bedford. However, giving up 90% state funding because a handful of folks want the dirt trail in the woods, is next-level NIMBY with a side of BANANA.
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The vote last week in Bedford was something of a mess, but not necessarily for the knee-jerk reactions that are being spread online.

In short, the issue of paving the Reformatory Branch to extend the Minuteman out to the Concord line has been voted on at Bedford Town Meeting three previous times over the years (since 2005!), and at each step of the way the project has received the approval of Bedford voters. All the way back in 2010, for example, Bedford voters voted in favor of advancing the paved trail to final design. That vote in all practicality should have amounted to Bedford voters giving their stamp of approval to the the paving and extension project. A minority of voters in Bedford want to see the existing path kept as it is (which really isn't a totally ridiculous POV, albeit a somewhat selfish one), but the majority believe that paving it is for the greater good.

But the way New England Town Government elections work is that you can't just vote once to approve a project, you have to vote over and over at each twist and turn, and that can lead to issues. One twist that was not foreseen in earlier votes is that the Town of Bedford didn't actually own all the right of way for the project, as everyone previously thought they did. In actuality, about 40 property owners that the Town (and everybody else) thought abutted the right of way actually own land under the path. So if you're travelling along the Reformatory Branch trail today, you're technically trespassing through tiny slices of a bunch of random people's backyards. Even the property owners themselves didn't know that they owned the land until lawyers started combing through 50 years' worth of legal documents in performing the exhaustive due diligence required to allow Federal funds to be spent on the project. (If Federal dollars weren't at stake here, its likely that nobody ever would have found out about these ROW issues and the project would probably have happened without interruption).

The vote last week was actually two votes to address this issue: one vote to approve a $1.5 million expenditure to secure the necessary easements along the right of way, and a second vote to actually secure those easements through eminent domain. The first vote received about 58% of the vote, passing and authorizing the Town to spend the money to secure the easements. The second vote received about 60% of the vote (more than the first!), but failed because it required a 2/3 majority, while the first vote only required a simple majority (this requirement wasn't even totally clear at the meeting when the vote was taken!). So in short, voters approved the $1.5 million expenditure required to secure the easements, but didn't approve actually securing the easements themselves!

This is for sure a setback for the project, but it isn't the final nail in its coffin just yet. As the vote showed, this isn't about money and Bedford's voters are willing to pay the bill. And since we now know the trail crosses private property, that could bring up other issues which may need to be resolved in subsequent votes. For example, various utilities run along the ROW, which we now know means they actually run through private property. And people using the path are technically trespassing too. That raises all sorts of question marks outside of the issue of extending the Minuteman. Might private landowners now put up fences blocking the current path? If you like the path as is now, you might no longer be able to use it even in its current state without the Town securing those easements. How are the utilities going to handle this?

There's also a possibility that easements could be secured by third parties or through alternative methods other than those voted on at the Town Meeting, opening the door for the project to continue without eminent domain ever needing to happen.

A few other random factoids:
* 100% design for this project had already been completed and submitted.
* Even if the path through Bedford does get paved, it'll face a MUCH less receptive voting public on the other side of the Concord line. So we'll still get a paved path that turns to dirt in the woods between Rt. 61 and Great Meadows.
 
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I’m familiar with Concord’s brand of obstinacy, though I expect the feds would have some extra issues with the stretch abutting Great Meadows.

I would love to see the trail extend to the Bruce Freeman some day, but that would involve crossing the Sudbury River near Egg Rock and tickling super swank NIMBYs in the Nashawtuc Rd area.
 
Agree the Bedford vote seems like a bummer. That said, a few random (kinda-mitigating) thoughts:
+ Per JumboBuc, maybe this isn't that much of a derailer (to be seen...)
+ Even if Bedford paved its portion of the Reformatory Branch Trail, doing the same with Concord's seems like a heavier lift (not least because of the proximity of a national wildlife refuge)

While it may not have the resonance of extending the Minuteman Bikeway, another interesting bikeway-expansion opportunity in the area may be to connect the Bruce Freeman with the Assabet River Trail in S. Acton alongside the Fitchburg Line...
 
itchy said:
Agree the Bedford vote seems like a bummer. That said, a few random (kinda-mitigating) thoughts:
+ Per JumboBuc, maybe this isn't that much of a derailer (to be seen...)
+ Even if Bedford paved its portion of the Reformatory Branch Trail, doing the same with Concord's seems like a heavier lift (not least because of the proximity of a national wildlife refuge)

While it may not have the resonance of extending the Minuteman Bikeway, another interesting bikeway-expansion opportunity in the area may be to connect the Bruce Freeman with the Assabet River Trail in S. Acton alongside the Fitchburg Line...
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@itchy curious - has a Bruce Freeman - Assabet River Trail connection along the Fitchburg Line been formally / informally proposed by a public agency or non-profit? Another way of asking that is whether there's been some sort of feasibility assessment to gauge whether it's likely. Agreed that that would be a key link - could potentially feedback down into the Mass Central Rail Trail one day.
 
^^ Not as far as I've seen. Just seems like a logical thing to do - you have two major bikeways in close proximity (3 miles), with a railroad connecting them.

Just as elsewhere (e.g., the proposed-but-stalled bikeway in Belmont) you could theoretically pave a biketrail alongside the Fitchburg Line's ROW.
 
itchy said:
While it may not have the resonance of extending the Minuteman Bikeway, another interesting bikeway-expansion opportunity in the area may be to connect the Bruce Freeman with the Assabet River Trail in S. Acton alongside the Fitchburg Line...
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+1

I biked from Marlborough to Lowell last October, mostly using a combination of these two trails. The missing link was not the greatest riding experience -- I felt like I was being chased up hills by angry animals drivers for that whole section!
 
itchy said:
Just as elsewhere (e.g., the proposed-but-stalled bikeway in Belmont) you could theoretically pave a biketrail alongside the Fitchburg Line's ROW.
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Just to clarify, the MCRT alongside the Fitchburg Line in Belmont is in active development. They submitted the 25% design for the section from Blanchard Rd to Belmont Center in January.
 
The missing link I've been wondering about is the middle section of the Assabet River Rail Trail. Unfortunately, most of it is owned by Honey Pot Hill Orchards, which uses it as a service road and has said they don't want a bike path going through their orchard because people will steal their apples. I think they could fence off the path and put in a gate with a cashier station, and lots of people would come out on the commuter rail to ride their bikes down the ARRT to go apple picking. Might take some of the pressure off their ludicrously crowded parking lots on fall weekends.
 
Gotcha! There were two missing links in my route, mixed-up which one you meant. Neither were great, but the one by Honey Pot Hill didn't bother me as much. I think it might be possible on that orchard section to simply improve bike infrastructure on the connecting roads.
 
Went out on the Watertown-Cambridge Greenway for the first time this season. It's nice, but gosh does it drop the ball at both ends. A better connection to the Minuteman/Somerville Path at Alewife a connection to the Charles River Greenway/Bike Path at Watertown Square are sorely needed.
 
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