The East Coast Greenway announced new freetools available for navigation and trip planning, including:
- Cue sheets for the entire route. These are available free by request and will will soon be posted on our website. For now, email us for copies. Note: these cue sheets have only been completely field-checked in the southbound direction. Volunteer cyclists are needed to field-proof these northbound cue sheets, email us to volunteer.
- And Google Maps. Here's the one for DC/MD (their link is broken) and Virginia
In addition they announced that
ECGA volunteers have helped ensure that ongoing planning work on the proposed South East High Speed Rail Corridor (faster than what's pictured here) between Petersburg, VA and Raleigh, NC will include a greenway corridor in both states. Environmental planning, set to begin this spring, has been approved to acquire a 30-foot easement adjacent to the rail corridor specifically to support a greenway trail. Piggy-backing a greenway trail onto this large interstate transportation effort provides an unique opportunity for large-scale trail implementation.
The greenway would generally follow the high speed rail corridor but would diverge at towns to provide access to local amenities. In areas were the high speed rail alignment will divert from existing railroad track, newly abandoned track bed will be used as the base recreational trail. In other areas, where the new high-speed rail alignment will follow existing tracks, the greenway would be adjacent to the rail corridor. This means that the proposed 140-mile trail would be a unique mix of rail-to-trails and rails-with-trails. While this effort is still in the early planning phases, ECGA intends to use the momentum of this first effort to push this ambitious plan to a successful conclusion.
That would be a great precedent if the rail gets extended north to DC.
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