Bay Colony Rail Trail, Needham

There are exciting developments on the Needham portion of the Bay Colony Rail Trail project. The Town has gotten fully involved in the project and, working with representatives from the community, has agreed to take over development of the trail. This is excellent news since the Town has the expertise and equipment to be applied to the job, and obviously will deliver the trail to the standards they require.

This arrangement was virtually required in order to make use of the $70,000 allocated by the State through Denise Garlick’s efforts, since those funds have to be received by a municipality.

The funds we have raised for the effort are still needed, so we’re working with the Town to make sure our sponsoring of the project and our funding is used as planned and promised, so we can ensure development of the trail we all have envisioned.

Our planned start date for the project is now Spring 2015, with an anticipated completion by late Summer 2015.

Draft Plans Available

This week the Town engineering department published draft plans for the path. These plans are available to the public for review, and there will be a meeting at 7:00 pm on Wed., October 15th at the Public Services Administration Building on 500 Dedham Avenue, when Town and Rail trail officials will be on hand to discuss the plans and project plan.

The plans are divided into seven PDF files, and can be accessed at the links below:

• Needham Rail Trail Plan 1 of 7
• Needham Rail Trail Plan 2 of 7
• Needham Rail Trail Plan 3 of 7
• Needham Rail Trail Plan 4 of 7
• Needham Rail Trail Plan 5 of 7
• Needham Rail Trail Plan 6 of 7
• Needham Rail Trail Plan 7 of 7

Good morning All, and Happy September!

On this day many gears are reluctantly grinding into place, and this is yet another agenda item to bring to your attention. The BCRT Needham meetings start up this month, specifically next Tuesday, September 10th, at 7:15, at the usual room in the Public Service Administration Building on 500 Dedham Ave.

The primary topic will be our fundraising efforts, which kicked off over the summer, and which will hopefully get into a new gear this fall. Focus will be on spreading the word, and continuing the great grassroots funding – we already have 45 donors (many of whom are on this list), and a total of $11,475! This is just a fantastic start, thanks to all of you. Details on our Tracking Progress page. This fall, with this great show of local support, it will be a time when we reach out to local businesses and merchants to ask them to participate in this effort.

The goal is to demonstrate our ability to partner with the town in covering the costs for this wonderful resource. The town remains fully committed and engaged: the Recreational Path is on the Selectmen’s goals for 2014, and there are active conversations between the town and the MBTA about the lease. The expectation is that the lease will be on the agenda for the special Town Meeting in early November, and our ability to raise funds will remove a key concern.

We are also looking to extend the study that was done last spring, so that we can get FST’s professional perspective on the alternatives for extending the trail between High Rock Street and Chestnut Street. As you may recall, the MBTA determined that it wanted to retain the tracks for that section, although that is still subject of the discussions with the town. There are some interesting alternatives to consider, which FST will study and summarize.

I hope on the 10th we can also discuss the promotional video that was proposed a couple months back by Svetlana Vakhutinsky, and put together a plan to get that underway.

Hope to see you all on the 10th! Incidentally, the next meeting will be on October 29th, same place and time of day.