NORTH ADAMS — The North Adams Daily Transcript wrote in an 1896 story, “The wheelmen and wheelwomen, who are now visiting Northern Berkshire in great numbers, would be strongly impressed with our enterprise up here if they see something being done in the way of bicycle paths.”
A $17 million grant will allow Northern Berkshire County communities to forge a new, 9.3-mile path connecting to the Ashuwillticook Rail Trail, realizing an idea more than 120 years in the making.
U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Springfield, came to North Adams on Friday to announce the federal money, which will go toward planning, design and permitting for the stretch. In about four years, design will be complete, and the section will be shovel-ready.
Neal said the Adventure to Ashuwillticook Trail Project will attract thousands of annual visitors and stimulate the region’s economic activity.
“It’s about preservation in open space and waterways, making sure succeeding generations, they get a chance to use them just as we have, with improvements on the side of public investment,” Neal said to about 70 people packed into city council chambers. “Today is a major success because it connects Williamstown and Adams and North Adams.”
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Mass MoCA Executive Director Kristy Edmunds noted that creating this path will increase tourism and access to cultural benefits, as well as how it will make it possible for other modes of transportation apart from car travel to get around in the area.
The shared-use pathway will connect the existing rail trail to the Williamstown Mohican Path by way of North Adams and the rotary of the Mass MoCA campus. The proposed trail goes for 3 miles south through North Adams along the Hoosic River to Hodges Cross Road, next to McCann Technical School, and follows the river until getting to Lime Street in Adams, the current North County terminus.
Money for the Adventure to Ashuwillticook Trail path comes from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity grant, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, drafted in the Ways and Means Committee when Neal was chair. The grant award is the result of a joint effort by the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission, Mass MoCA, Tourists hotel and the municipalities of Adams, North Adams and Williamstown.
The entire design and preparation process will take four years and will be coordinated by the BRPC. The group’s executive director, Tom Matuszko, said the grant money will open doors for future construction money once shovel-ready.
At the moment, it is unclear exactly where the new trail will wind; that’s what the money and the design process is for.
Adams Select Board Chair John Duval said Adams' downtown has already experienced economic benefits with the rail trail running through.
“Adams, North Adams, sometimes Williamstown, we’ve had over the years a rivalry,” Duval said during Friday’s news conference. “However, we need to work together going forward. We can’t just be Adams doing our thing, North Adams doing our thing.”
For two decades, local and regional stakeholders have sought to carve a path through the Hoosic River Valley with little success. As the BRPC put it in a news release Friday, “the challenges of navigating the still-active rail lines in North Adams led to each proposal losing steam.”
“Particularly problematic was the patchwork of neighborhoods between the towns,” the BRPC added, “which in past proposals meant several potentially dangerous trail crossings of Route 2.”
To highlight just how long this “need,” as Touristshotel co-owner Eric Kerns put it, has gone unaddressed, Kerns and Touristshotel co-owner Ben Svenson read the 1896 Transcript story aloud.
State Rep. John Barrett III, D-North Adams, said he first heard the proposal of a bike path linking North County towns when he was mayor, and he wasn’t thrilled with it at the time.
“It all started in Adams, in North County, but I still wasn’t sold on it,” Barrett said. “In the end, as [Rep.] Neal indicated, it was a great product, and it was easy for him to sell.”
To this point, the trail had been put together piece by piece — this 9-plus-mile stretch represents the first time that municipalities are working in tandem.
North Adams Mayor Jennifer Macksey said that not having the abandoned railway to convert posed a challenge in extending the bike trail through North Adams, design-wise and financially. She said the grant award will speed up the planning process.
“Our communities cannot be siloed anymore, we have to connect them. And this is the way into the future,” Macksey said at the news conference.
Now half-a-mile deeper into Pittsfield, the rail trail runs from Merrill Road in Pittsfield to Lime Street in Adams. There's a new access point on Merrill Road, completed in November, with a parking lot and a pedestrian signal. The rail trail is now more than 14 miles long. The trail is meant to eventually be part of a 75-mile trail system from the Vermont border to the Connecticut border.
According to the BRPC, last year, there were more than 122,000 bike and pedestrian trips recorded at Park Street in Adams and Route 8 in Lanesborough.
As the 19th-century Transcript story says, “A little attention to this now, at a small expenditure of money, would prove good investment, and eventually would have much to do with drawing visitors to this delightful section. A good starter would be to connect Williamstown and North Adams with a bicycle path. It can be done at comparatively small expense.”