Monthly: May 2014

By Michael Kelley, Staff Writer. May 30, 2014, The Scarborough Leader.

Officials from the Eastern Trail Management District have long dreamed of a time when a bicyclist, runner or walker could continuously travel off-road from the Piscataqua River in Kittery to Casco Bay in South Portland. Now, thanks to funding from the Portland Area Comprehensive Transportation System (PACTS), that dream is a little bit closer to happening.

The communities of Scarborough and South Portland recently received $350,000 from PACTS to extend the Eastern Trail from Pleasant Hill Road in Scarborough to Wainwright Field in South Portland. The .8 mile trail, once completed, will go from Wainwright Field through the woods past Prouts Pond along Central Maine Power property before connecting to Pleasant Hill Road.

“We have advertised this as a trail between Kittery and Casco Bay and with this, now we are getting closer and closer to making that a reality,” said Eastern Trail Management District President Tad Redway.

The Eastern Trail passes through a dozen communities in York and Cumberland counties and is part of the East Coast Greenway, a 2,900-mile corridor that spans Maine to Florida.

Scarborough Town Planner Dan Bacon said the total cost of the project is $531,000. The remainder of the funding comes from money South Portland had already set aside for trail expansion.

“There was already money waiting to be used, but not enough for the entire .8 miles,” Bacon said.

Bacon said the plan is to finalize designs and get permitting approval this summer and fall and start construction in late fall or early winter. The money, Bacon said, was not supposed to be available for another year or two, but given the fact money had already been appropriated and PACTS had some money left over in its fiscal budget, the organization decided to use some of that money to fund the project.

The trail expansion project, Bacon said, coincides with a two-year project by the Maine Department of Transportation and the Scarborough Department of Public Works to reconstruct Pleasant Hill Road and make it more pedestrian friendly.

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By Shelby Carignan, Staff Writer. Friday, May 30, 2014. The Forecaster.

SCARBOROUGH — Officials confirmed that the town has received enough funding to begin closing the gap in the Eastern Trail between South Portland and Scarborough.

Though the $376,000 from the Portland Area Comprehensive Transportation System will not complete the 1.5-mile section from the Nonesuch River in Scarborough to Wainwright Athletic Complex in South Portland, it green-lights construction on a smaller segment just under a mile long from Wainwright to Pleasant Hill Road. 

Construction will likely begin late this year or early in 2015.

Nearly a third of the pedestrian and bike trail, which extends 65 miles from Bug Light Park in South Portland to Kittery, is completely off-road, according to Robert Hamblen, president of the Eastern Trail Alliance. The ultimate goal is to connect the entire trail via pedestrian pathways. 

The segment from Arundel to South Portland is 85 percent off-road, with the two most prominent interruptions remaining between Saco and Biddeford, and Scarborough and South Portland. The Maine Department of Transportation has studied plans to close those gaps, and determined that both require bridges.

“Both of them are expensive, but we firmly believe both will happen,” Hamblen said. “They’ve just both been laying there waiting for funding to make it possible.”

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Nearly 20 years of expansion has proven successful, and more is on the way.

Sunday, May 25, 12:01 A.M.

Pennsylvania trail guru Carl Knoch said it takes decades to build an off-road, long-distance bike path through urban areas.

In southern Maine it’s been nearly 17 years since the Eastern Trail was launched. And as we close in on two decades of work, the effort behind this urban trail has gained ground, quite literally.

I can attest to that, having spent the past decade waiting for the Eastern Trail Alliance, the nonprofit behind the trail’s development, to make it worth my while as a long-distance cyclist.

Four years ago the Eastern Trail Alliance founder, John Andrews, promised me they’d get me an off-road commuter route from my home in Kennebunkport to Portland. True to his word, it happened a year later when the Eastern Trail bicycle-and-pedestrian bridges were built over Route 1 and Interstate 95, and five miles of trails were added between Kennebunk and Old Orchard Beach.

Andrews and his band of bicyclists have proven relentless. And this summer they’re not slowing as they fan out across this trail that now covers 20.7 miles to conduct an economic-impact study to help build support to expand the trail to Wells, South Berwick, Eliot and Kittery.

Not bad for an idea formed less than two decades ago.

In 2001, when I arrived at the Maine Sunday Telegram, all that existed of the trail was a 5-mile section in South Portland. But there was talk of expanding it as far as Kittery. And all I could think was, how likely is that?

On the other hand, you had to agree it was a good idea. So Staff Photographer Greg Rec and I saddled up our road bikes with reporting and photography equipment, and set out to cover the 70-plus miles of the proposed trail that had just been marked along the roads that followed the proposed off-road route.

We started at dawn from the Route 1 bridge over the Piscataqua River in Kittery and rode to dusk, taking photographs along the way and finishing at Bug Light in South Portland, where an editor ferried us back to our cars. Then as we each drove north from the Piscataqua River as the sun set, I worried we’d both fall asleep at the wheel. But I also recalled the sight of old barns, rocky brooks, wildflower fields and birch tree groves. Suddenly I saw this crazy idea anew.

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Posted: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 3:56 pm | By Kayla J. Collins kayla@keepmecurrent.com |

OLD ORCHARD BEACH – The next phase of developing 72 acres near the intersection of Portland Avenue and Milliken Mills Road in Old Orchard Beach as a multi-use forestry space and public recreational area is under way.

The Town Council has accepted a $2,802 bid from stewardship forester Parker Forestry Associates, North Berwick, to inventory the property and create a Forest Management Plan that would include a description of land ownership objectives and what can be done to improve the site.

In January, the town received a matching grant for about $8,000 from Project Canopy and the Maine State Forest Service to help extend the network of recreational trails in the community, and to preserve 68 acres of land off Portland Avenue as wildlife habitat, according to Conservation Commission member Kimbark Smith, who is also the project manager for what has been dubbed the Milliken Mill Woods project.

Design and construction of the trails, which includes painting a crosswalk to connect the properties and erecting kiosks, will depend upon the help of volunteers and in-kind donations, Smith said.

Along with the Conservation Commission, other partners in the Milliken Mill Woods project include the Eastern Trail Alliance, Saco Bay Trails, the Ocean Park Conservation Society, the Pathway Alternative Education Program of Old Orchard Beach High School and the Bicycling Coalition of Maine.

This is the second major project the Conservation Commission has undertaken to expand Old Orchard Beach’s trail system, said Mark Koenigs, project manager for the Easter Trail Connector Sub Committee.

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