I Love Bike Paths That Go Places
That may be a Captain Obvious statement for y’all, but over my first weeks living in New Haven — transitioning from life in a shuttle bus to life in an apartment — I’ve had to go shopping for things that you might only find in Big Box Stores and get there on a bicycle.
And so I must say that I love the Farmington Canal Trail, because it takes me places I need to go.
The trail takes me happily, quietly, and safely to places I would likely hate to ride to without it. When I think Big Box Stores around here, I think of the Boston Post Road and that road is just all sorts of hell on a bicycle. Some of my least favorite roads are the transition roads just outside a big city leading to the country side — where drivers can finally let go and hit the gas and any imposition is immediately infuriating for them— but the Boston Post Road is worse. By far.
Well, thanks to the trail, I didn’t have to even attempt that road on a bicycle.
And if you were paying attention this weekend, you may have seen a story in the New Haven Independent about how the trail is now 1,175 feet closer to completion. This is especially exciting, because now “the city now needs to secure only one last easement before it can begin construction on Phase IV of the Farmington Canal Trail, which would bring the public pedestrian-and-bicycle path from its current terminus at Temple Street another two miles south through Wooster Square to the Long Wharf pier.”
At the same time, a section of the trail was completed in Cheshire that now gives us “34 uninterrupted miles with the unveiling of the completed 0.8 mile gap on Sunday.”
Taking the trail these past few weeks to complete what would have otherwise been onerous tasks by bicycle has been in stark contrast to my more recent experiences with sweet, off-road bicycle paths down in Austin, Texas, and hence my applause for something y’all may now take for granted. In Austin, while there are bike lanes and cycle tracks aplenty, the main paved off-road path is mainly one ridden for pleasure.
It was a joy to use a bike path like this to actually get to various places I needed to go without having to deal with insane roads.
That is all.
