Sunday, February 22, 2009

Completing the Schuylkill River Trail to Create the Region’s First Green Transportation Corridor

Completing the Schuylkill River Trail to Create the Region’s First Green Transportation Corridor

a Town Square Series forum

Location: Academy of Natural Sciences
Date: Thursday, February 26th
Time: 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM (Refreshments from 6-6:30pm; Panel begins at 6:30pm)
RSVP:
rwall@ansp.org

The Schuylkill River Trail is an extremely popular and heavily used recreational asset and commuter route. It also has the potential to be much more: a connector between a variety of Philadelphia neighborhoods and suburban neighbors, the region’s first green transportation corridor for multiple communities, a strong catalyst for economic development, and a critical access point to open space and commuting paths for underserved neighborhoods.

To be complete, the trail has critical gaps that need to be filled, and it needs to be extended southward, northward and into more neighborhoods. There are nine trail projects that, if constructed, would complete Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River Trail from Delaware County to Montgomery County. The Forum will detail the public benefits of a completed trail and describe the planned trail segments to make the case for the Greater Philadelphia region and its elected officials to work together to make these trail segments a priority and to fund their construction.

The organizations from the non-profit, development corporation and public sectors working together to articulate the vision for a completed and connected Schuylkill River Trail in the Greater Philadelphia Region include Schuylkill River Park Alliance, Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, Schuylkill River Development Corporation, Schuylkill Project, Manayunk Development Corporation, East Falls Development Corporation, Roxborough Development Corporation, Friends of Ivy Ridge Trail, Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania Environmental Council, Bartram’s Garden and Fairmount Park.

Introductory Remarks:

Curtis Jones Jr., Philadelphia City Council, 4th District

Michael DiBerardinis, Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources

Rina Cutler, Deputy Mayor, Office of Transportation and Utilities

Mark Focht, Executive Director, Fairmount Park

Panel:

Sarah Clark Stuart, Schuylkill River Park Alliance

Loree D. Jones, Executive Director, Manayunk Development Corporation

Joseph Syrnick, President, Schuylkill River Development Corporation

Gina Snyder, Executive Director, East Falls Development Corporation

Christopher Leswing, Assistant Director, Planning Supervisor, Lower Merion Township

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just found out that residents of the Shawmont Neighborhood may attend. There is a small but vocal group there that has been opposed to trail development.

Libby Maxim said...

if Manayunk would pave the trail portion in their city, you shawmont people would never see the bikers

and why no trail?? dont get the opposition

maybe tonight we will hear about the possibility of paving the SRT in Manyunk

JB said...

Would love to see Cresheim Trail approved and completed.

Libby Maxim said...

BDGP

PLEASE PLEASE post about this meeting, us folks out in the burbs cannot get into a center city meeting at 6 pm on a weeknight

wish this meeting was being videotapes and streamed on line

libby

Andrew J. Besold said...

I like riding through Shawmont. It breaks up the monotony of the trail. If the rest of the old rail ROW was paved do you really think the local Shawmont residents would prefer bikers going past their back yards?!?!

I just wish somebody in Shawmont would get smart and put up a small stand with snacks and drinks. They'd make a mint!