Harrumph!

There’s a lot shaking on what will be the Neponset River Greenway, but boy, it’s raw now. We toured a portion by bike last evening and were favorably and unfavorably impressed.

Resources:

• Boston Natural Areas Network events calendar is here.
• The Greenway Festival brochure is here.
• The MassBike description of and links to what’s going to happen is here.
• The BNAN version (with more accurate links) is here.
• The master plan for the greenway is here.

The ride was a conflict for me. I really, really wanted to do the Wild Edibles Walk at Allandale Woods BNAN had scheduled for the same date and time. We have enjoyed that urban wild and its great stone wall already. “Join Russ Cohen, expert forager…on a two-hour ramble…identification of at least eighteen varieties of edible wild plants, preparation methods, and guidelines for safe and environmentally responsible foraging” was enticing.

I wanted to do both. Moreover, my uxorial unit wanted the bike trip. She rarely bikes and had never gone on a major road, Hyde Park Avenue in this case. The preponderance of the small weighed most heavily.

Twenty or so of us ended up with three leaders — Candice Cook, BNAN’s program coordinator; Paul Schmiek, short-term Boston bike czar before Mayor Menino’s cycling conversion; Doug Mink, urban biking fanatic and unrepentant hippie sort. Mink was the designated leader, but he has neither the voice nor extroversion of a tour guide.

Pic trick: Click the thumbnail for a larger view of the greenway master plan. This is a subset of larger one, available here.

Through no fault of BNAN or Mink, this was like a hike with Daniel Boone over a sort of wilderness with a bright future. The vision of those who have long advocated these bike paths and mixed-use trails is moderately contagious. If you were expecting a version of the completed Cape Cod Rail Trail, you would miss the point and be deeply disappointed. This stuff is in the works or coming, but not today and not tomorrow.

We tooled around for about 10 miles, pretty slowly. That included busy streets near and by the river, broken pavement and potholes typical of secondary residential sections, an obstacle course of orange barrels and Jersey barriers, and not an inch of what anyone could call a bike trail.

Yet, even we jaded types used to Boston bike bluster can see some of what’s sure to happen. Along Brush Hill Road into Truman Parkway from Mattapan Square into the bottom of Hyde Park (see inset above), a long section has a mixed-use path under construction. At the curb will be a five-foot dedicated bike path…for those speedsters who terrify families with their Spandex-aided breezes.

That should finish this year, but only southbound. The neighborhood, says Mink, is not yet ready to give up any parking on the northbound side. (By the bye, we are likely to move from JP to HP soon and I have been biking the area, including the northbound Brush Hill route. It’s busy but certainly no scarier than biking main drags in Boston, which I do all the time.) Mink noted at several points the silliness of Boston and the state together not being able to coordinate these efforts or do the obvious, like designated bike lanes on the roads to complete these projects and keep everyone safe.

In the end, even with Mink mumbling to one end of our group, he was a welcome aid. I have biked by parts of last evening’s route without seeing the short-term and mid-term visions. It looked like roadside rubble. Other sections were brand new to me and I didn’t know you could sneak down a side street, carry the bike a few yards over curbs and end up wheeling beside the river.

I now believe this will happen and that this greenway will be family friendly for strolls and slow biking. Like so many of the Boston-area bike projects, this one is stuck out there, largely isolated from both other cycling/walking futures and the larger city. Yet, this is another neighborhood that will benefit. Plus, this is the Neponset River Greenway and they are building it not coincidentally where the river has always been.

Good stuff this and my wife found the trip exhausting but thoroughly enjoyable.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, BNAN, cycling, bike path, MassBike, Neponset Greenway