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One of Pennsylvania’s “top 10” trail gaps soon will be linked, piecing together two of the Lehigh Valley’s most populated centers via a walking and biking trail for the first time. Bethlehem City Council in October approved an agreement of sale with Norfolk Southern to buy 11.8 acres of land connecting the roughly 1-mile gap between the Bethlehem Greenway and Saucon Rail Trail for $4.
3 million. The city closed on the sale in November, and officially expects to begin work on connecting the two trails this year. The Saucon Rail Trail is a 7.
5-mile trail that winds from Hellertown down to Coopersburg, and is the site of the former North Pennsylvania Railroad. Trains stopped running in 1984, and it was converted into a walking and biking trail in 2011. The Bethlehem Greenway is newer — the trail was completed in 2017, and it stretches 1.
9 miles west to east across south Bethlehem from New Street to Saucon Park, near the border of Hellertown. A less than one mile gap exists between the two trails, which is a heavily overgrown area of former railroad tracks. “For well over a decade now, the city has done a lot of work through multiple administrations and councils to build out the south Bethlehem greenway, which has been really transformative in a lot of ways for south Bethlehem,” said Laura Collins, Bethlehem’s director of community and economic development.
“But the gap between end of greenway and start of rail trail has been something that has, in some ways, prevented additional travel between Bethlehem and other communities.” Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has called it one of the state’s “top 10” trail gaps it would like to connect in the next five years. The state prioritizes addressing trail gaps that are less than five miles apart, connect several miles of trails together, cost at least $1 million to install trail infrastructure and can be completed within the next five years, said DCNR Secretary Cindy Dunn.
“If you build a part of a trail, it will create an impetus to finish that trail, because people love them,” Dunn said. “When you invest in trails, it’s an investment in people, in communities, it’s an investment in health and the economy, it’s one of the things that can really bring communities up.” The state kicked in a $500,000 grant to Bethlehem to purchase the land, and the city covered the rest of the cost of the sale via other government grants including $2.
7 million in community project funding from former Congresswoman Susan Wild’s office. Once connected, Quakertown, Coopersburg, Hellertown and Bethlehem will be accessible via 14 miles of walkable, bikeable and car-free trails for the first time. The southern end of the Saucon Rail Trail connects directly to the Upper Bucks Rail trail, a 3-mile path that extends down to Veterans Park in Richland Township.
It will also be the first time Hellertown and Bethlehem will be connected via a pedestrian-friendly route. Despite the fact that the two municipalities’ borders touch, the only way to walk or bike between them is either via narrow backroads that cut through South Mountain, or via a busy, highway-like portion of Route 412 that connects to Interstate 78. “People would just continue on from Bethlehem to the Saucon Rail Trail, but they would just do it on the road, which is not the safest way to do it,” said Eric Bartosz, president of the Saucon Rail Trail Oversight Commission.
“So from a safety perspective, it makes it much better to have continuation, without diverting onto the roadways, dealing with traffic.” The land Bethlehem purchased is in the city limits right along the Hellertown border, so Bethlehem is taking full responsibility for the trail construction costs, which are estimated to be around $1 million. The city currently has several pending grant applications to cover the construction costs.
“It’s a pretty big deal for the trail community, people who bike, people who want to travel between these communities, and maybe go out to restaurants, and visit south side Bethlehem or also people who maybe want to get to work between these different communities,” Collins said. “The greenway can serve all of those purposes, we hope and think it will have a pretty large benefit in that regard.” Although the greenway and rail trail gap is the only “Top 10” priority in the Lehigh Valley, Dunn said the state is also looking to put resources toward the Delaware and Lehigh trail which, once completed, will be the longest rail trail in Pennsylvania at 165 miles.
The state is putting resources toward connecting a gap in the trail that runs through Allentown, and Bethlehem is also commencing work this year to connect the Monocacy Creek Trail to the D&L. In addition to drawing in visitors and boosting the economy, fortifying the city’s trail system can help forge social connections between communities, Dunn said. “When the community has a trail and people run into each other on a trail, it’s a different dynamic than, say, political arguing on social media,” Dunn said.
“People are people on a trail, you can put aside differences and see each other as a community. We see it as important in knitting together the community which is now more important than ever.” Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at Liweber@mcall.
com..
