The Triangle’s greenway system is a tiny step closer to becoming a complete network.

Joe Godfrey, parks planner with the Town of Cary, tells GGNC that a 1.3-mile missing link of the Black Creek Greenway should be finished mid-April. The stretch would extend the existing 5.6 miles of Black Creek Greenway running south from Lake Crabtree to Chapel Hill Road on to Maynard Road. A short stretch of the sidewalk/greenway will run alongside Maynard before it crosses High House Road. From there, Godfrey says another short missing link should begin construction soon and will link with existing greenway into the heart of Bond Park.

Here’s the significance of these two small stretches of trail:

• They will create a continuous 7-mile stretch of greenway running from Lake Crabtree to Bond Park.
• At it’s norther end, at Lake Crabtree, the trail connects, via a one-mile stretch of gravel road, with the 5-mile bike & bridle trail that runs through Umstead State Park. Cumulative connected distance: 12 miles.
• The far end of the bike & bridle trail connects with the Reedy Creek Greenway in Raleigh. That greenway links with the Rocky Branch Greenway, for about 10 miles of greenway (with a half-mile sidewalk connection along Gorman Street). Cumulative connected distance: 22 miles.
• The far end of the Rocky Branch Greenway connects with the 6.5-mile (currently) Walnut Creek Greenway along the south side of Raleigh. Cumulative connected distance: 28.5 miles.
• Backing up to the Reedy Creek Trail, just after it takes the pedestrian bridge over I-440/le Beltline, another greenway, the 3-mile House Creek, is under construction and expected to be completed by year’s end. Cumulative connected distance: 31.5 miles.
• House Creek is significant because it will connected the Reedy Creek Greenway with the 11.7-mile Crabtree Trail greenway. Cumulative connected distance: 43.2 miles.
• Backing up to Bond Park, where the Black Creek Greenway concludes on the southern end, it connects with Cary’s White Oak Creek Greenway. Eventually, White Oak Creek will run 7.1 miles and link with the American Tobacco Trail, the nearly complete jewel of the region’s greenways running 22 miles from western Wake County into downtown Durham. Currently, White Oak Creek is 5.3 miles, with two breaks: a short one between MacArthur Drive and Davis Drive, where a rail line must be negotiated, and just past NC 55 where the trail will be closed through next December for construction of the Triangle Expressway. Let’s put the current distance on this one at 4 miles, for a cumulative connected distance of 48 miles.

More connections are near on the Raleigh end that will extend the cumulative connected distance of greenways in Cary and Raleigh (with the help of Umstead) to in excess 75 miles. Read more about those Raleigh connections here and here. For a comprehensive map of the Cary Greenway system (from which the above map was taken, go here.)