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Date: 5/3/2022
NORTHAMPTON – The city of Northampton recently received $3.6 million in Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS) courtesy of U.S. Senator Ed Markey to extend the Rocky Hill Greenway shared use path.
The city has so far built 1.5 miles of the Rocky Hill Road Greenway for pedestrians and bicyclists, including the area between Route 66 to Florence Road, and Burts Pit Road to Sandy Hill Road.
These sections, however, are currently isolated and do not connect, according to Wayne Feiden, Northampton’s director of planning and sustainability. The federal funding, therefore, will help build a link.
The money, according to Feiden, will help to connect the section of Route 66 to Florence Road to the existing Northampton-New Haven Canal. “It’s a really important 1.1 miles,” said Feiden, referring to the one-mile gap that the city is about to affix. The $3.6 million of federal funding will cover the design, acquisition, and construction of the connection between the two sections.
“We have a goal for everybody who lives in an urban or suburban area to have easy access to a shared-use path to a bike path,” said Feiden. Although the city has already completed 13 miles of trails over the years, Feiden told Reminder Publishing that the area they are focused on now is the biggest suburban population that is not being served.
“Obviously, this is important from a recreation standpoint,” said Feiden. “But it’s also important to connect people.”
According to Feiden, because the CDS way of funding is a novel process for the city, he is unsure of when construction may begin within this area. If it follows the normal Massachusetts Department of Transportation process, then the city could be looking at a construction timeline of 2023 or 2024, but nothing is set in stone yet.
In a letter to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who emphasized the importance of this project from a climate action and transportation standpoint, state Sen. Jo Comerford expressed her support for the Rocky Hill Greenway project.
“This path will connect a large neighborhood (Ryan Road to Florence Road) to downtown Northampton and Easthampton via the existing regional shared use path, created over time through municipal, federal, and state investment,” said Comerford. “Currently, there are no safe pedestrian or bicycle connections between this area and any of the commercial areas in the city. This project will single handedly change that, providing transportation choice to a neighborhood where most travel is currently done by single-occupancy vehicles.”
The funding for this project was part of a massive fiscal year 22 spending bill for the state prepared by Markey for well over $138 million.
“We very deliberately built very few parking lots,” said Feiden, when reminiscing on Northampton’s vision for trails that began almost two decades ago. “We didn’t want people to put their bikes in their car and drive to a path. That’s great if they do it, but we really want to serve people right where they live, and so this is a really important project for serving people right where they live.”