Currently, the Crabtree Creek Trail ends at Lindsay Drive, just short of Duraleigh Road.
A settlement reached earlier this week between Raleigh and the owners of a quarry along Crabtree Creek means the city can finally proceed with a 2- to 3-mile extension of the Crabtree Creek Trail into Umstead State Park. The extension will create a roughly 18-mile paved greenway along Crabtree Creek from Umstead to Raleigh’s 28-mile Neuse River Trail.
“It’s the last missing piece,” Vic Lebsock, Raleigh’s senior greenway designer, said this morning.
The Crabtree extension had been held hostage in a battle between the city and local homeowners and Hanson Aggregates, which owns the Crabtree Quarry. Local residents didn’t like the blasting required to mine the rock; Hanson had a lot more rock it wanted to mine. (Read more about the settlement here.)
The settlement ends a 20-year dispute and clears the way for design to begin on a trail that Lebsock says has its “difficult aspects.” Foremost among them: On the east end the trail will need to climb up from Crabtree Creek to avoid a stretch of land Hanson will be allowed to quarry for about another 40 years.
“We’ll need to design-in switchbacks and make the trail handicap accessible,” Lebsock says. The greenway will climb for about a quarter mile along Duraleigh Road, then follow a ridgeline across to Richland Creek, where switchbacks will again be employed to take the greenway down to Crabtree Creek. From there, the greenway will continue to Umstead.
There is currently no funding for the project, estimated to cost about $3.5 million. But that appears to be a temporary concern.
Lebsock says he’s currently pulling together “residual funds” from other greenway projects to fund the design element. He expects the design to begin by summer, with construction possibly beginning by summer 2015.
“That would be really aggressive,” says Lebsock. But if it happens, the trail could possibly be done by the end of next year.read more
I love to paddle rivers. But I don’t always have a party to paddle with. That’s a problem for three reasons:
Paddling with others is more fun;
It’s safer, and;
From a purely selfish standpoint, paddling with a party makes setting up a shuttle a whole lot easier.
Usually.
Like most folks, I’m excited about the near completion of Raleigh’s Neuse River Trail, a 27.5-mile greenway following its namesake river from the base of Falls dam south to the Johnston County line. (The missing link, a 3/4-mile stretch below Horseshoe Farm Park is scheduled to open early next year). And, like most folks, I’m excited for the cycling/running/walking potential the greenway offers.read more
The Neuse River Trail is the backbone of Raleigh’s rapidly growing greenway system. Last fall, the first 6.5 miles of the eventual 27.5-mile greenway opened, running from the northern trailhead near the base of Falls Lake dam downstream to the WRAL Soccer Park off Perry Road. In April, another 20 miles opened, from Horseshoe Farm Park off U.S. 401 downstream to the Johnston County Line. And you needn’t stop there: Another 5.5 miles of paved, 10-foot greenway continues to Clayton.read more
Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease the transition, every Monday we feature a 90 Second Escape — essentially, a 90-second video or slide show of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s not under a fluorescent bulb.read more
The latest word from the field, via the ever-reliable Michael Bowers, a longtime greenway aficionado, is that the House Creek Greenway in Raleigh is pretty much open: “I rode across the bridge” — for the last couple of months the greenway’s lone missing link — “today [Saturday]! All paving is done … connecting to the Meredith-[Museum of Art] greenway trail. The tunnel under Glen Eden is closed though due to fencing installation…which should be done in a few days. You just have to go around via Ridge Road.”read more
