The ad hoc group met with David Loutzenheiser, Senior Transportation
Planner at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) this morning about bicycle and hiking trails in Medfield. Attending were Town Planner, Sarah Raposa, Town Administrator, Mike Sullivan, Bay Colony Rail Trail Committee chair, Christian Donner, BCRT committee member, George Hinkley, interested resident Alec Stevens, and interested selectman, me.
Per what the MAPC person told Sarah before the meeting, he is working on two rail trail feasibility projects: (1) Wrentham/Norfolk/Walpole/Norwood and (2) Bellingham/Medway/Millis/Medfield. Apparently, he has funding to begin work on these projects and depending on the communities’ levels of interest would like to do so either this fall or next spring.
At the meeting he focused on
- the Bay Colony Rail Trail (in yellow on the above map),
- the possibility of running a rail trail along side of the active north-south rail line (also in yellow on the above map), and
- hiking trail connectors
- from downtown to Rocky Woods (needs a boardwalk North of Hinkley Pond)
- from Elm Street area over to the Bubbling Brook area
- from Rocky Woods to the Blue Hills
The Bay Colony Rail Trail will probably proceed. The North South rail line trail would link many of the main features and sites in town in ways that would dramatically improve the town. Alec Stevens has proposed this in the past, based on his experience with a successful one he knew while growing up in Philadelphia.
It is going to be a long process, requiring lots of work and planning, and it has started.
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