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Organizers hope bike trail spurs interest in larger venture
Friday, July 21, 2000 By Jan Ackerman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
A nonprofit group in the North Hills is breaking ground this summer on a small section of bicycle trail in McCandless.
Members of the Harmony Trails Council hope that once the 0.6-mile trail is built from Vestal Field to Oak Ridge Drive, opposition to a larger trail project along a former railroad corridor will disappear.
"The idea is to put in place a trail so that people of the North Hills will have a sense of what a trail is," Todd Chambers of the Harmony Trails Council board said yesterday. He hopes the trail eventually will link to North Park.
"This is a first," he said.
Chambers also hopes that one day the Vestal Trail will link into a still unrealized bicycle trail on the path of the old Harmony Short Line, a commuter trolley line that connected New Castle and Pittsburgh in the early 1900s.
The Harmony Trails Council recently secured a $25,000 grant to study whether it would be feasible to turn about three miles of that old right of way, from Pine Creek Road to Wall Park in McCandless, into a trail.
"The study will look at what opportunities are available and where they are the greatest," said John Stephen, executive director of Friends of the Riverfront and a consultant to the Harmony Trails Council.
The money came from the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which spread $3.5 million around the state for the study and construction of new bicycle trails in 40 Pennsylvania counties.
Of that money, $391,060 came to Allegheny County to fund existing projects and study new ones:
Howard Davidson, Penn Hills planning director, said the Quality Community Project and Friends of Penn Hills Parks jointly obtained the money, which will be matched with a $2,000 grant from the Heinz Foundation and $8,000 of volunteer labor. The project faces a major hurdle because the Allegheny Valley Railroad line still carries freight along the river.
In the short term, Davidson said, the groups are using $85,000 in federal money to improve landscaping and rebuild brick walls along the river.
In addition, Friends of the Riverfront is helping Millvale develop a trail along the Allegheny River, Stephen said. Millvale has been awarded $271,000 in federal funds. The community has received other funding for the project, including a $65,000 community recreation grant from the state.
In McCandless, Chambers hopes construction of the Vestal Trail will spur excitement for bicycle trails.
For years, Chambers and his group have been working on plans to build a trail along the Harmony Short Line, but they have encountered many roadblocks. The railroad has not operated for 70 years and the right of way is owned by numerous individuals, developers and companies.
In 1995, early plans were redrawn because Bradford Woods residents made it clear they didn't want a bikeway through their community.
Through the years, the trail council has received about $105,000 in grants. It will use some of that money to build the Vestal Trail and some of it to fund a study of all possibilities for building a trail along the Harmony Short Line.
Dirt soon will start flying on the Vestal Trail project. Once a contract is awarded, Chambers said, the trail council will work closely with McCandless officials, who will be improving a retention basin for the Oak Ridge section of the community.
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Dormont received $100,000 to construct nearly 5,000 feet of new bicycle and walking trails in Dormont Park. The trails will link existing and planned facilities, add benches and bike stations and meet standards of the Americans With Disabilities Act.