LOWER POTTSGROVE TWP., Pa. \u2014 A new trail connection opened Tuesday with a ribbon-cutting celebration.<\/p>\n
The connector is just nine-tenths of a mile long, but getting here took much longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt completes a connection that has been decades in the making,\u201d said Jamila Winder, chair of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners.<\/p>\n
The larger trail vision began in 1976. This connector received its first regional planning grant in 2015.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a safer, more direct route between Industrial Highway and the Route 422 bridge, whether people are walking, biking, rolling, or strolling,\u201d Winder said.<\/p>\n
The extension helps connect almost 70 miles of the Schuylkill River Trail, from Reading to Philadelphia. The trail now stretches from Bartram\u2019s Garden in Philadelphia to Riverfront Park in Reading.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about walkability. It\u2019s about riding your bike. It\u2019s about hanging out and meeting and taking a look at nature,\u201d said U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean. \u201cIt\u2019s about better health, but it\u2019s also about economic development around these trails.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crews also had some smaller neighbors to look out for during construction.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis area is a nesting habitat for the red-bellied turtle, so construction had to work around these protected species,\u201d Winder said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOWER POTTSGROVE TWP., Pa. \u2014 A new trail connection opened Tuesday with a ribbon-cutting celebration. The connector is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[8036,1160,200,2303,128,130,129,122598,7858,9347,122597,5090,6556],"class_list":["post-296510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-biking","tag-economic-development","tag-montgomery-county","tag-public-health","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-red-bellied-turtle","tag-ribbon-cutting","tag-schuylkill-river-trail","tag-trail-connection","tag-urban-planning","tag-walking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}