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Greenway trail through the Triangle poised to become part of state parks system

The East Coast Greenway, a planned 3,000-mile trail from Florida to Maine that passes through North Carolina and the Triangle, may soon become part of the state parks system.

The General Assembly has sent a bill to Gov. Roy Cooper that would designate the greenway a North Carolina State Trail and make it a unit of the Division of State Parks. The designation would raise the trail’s profile and make it eligible for state support, including money to help develop new sections.

The greenway’s planned route through the state runs 365 miles from the southeastern corner north through Fayetteville and the Triangle before entering Virginia near Kerr Lake. About 30% of the trail is finished in the state, including a 75-mile stretch through the Triangle that is the longest completed section of the East Coast Greenway in a metropolitan area.

There’s also a planned 425-mile alternative route that branches off at Wilmington and follows the coast to Virginia near Dismal Swamp State Park.

House Bill 130 would make the East Coast Greenway the 10th State Trail in the parks system. The most prominent one is the 1,175-mile Mountains-to-Sea Trail, which also passes through the Triangle and is more than half finished.

The state parks system does not own the trails but acknowledges their importance and aids in their development.

“They have a whole team of folks who help develop these state trails, from planing them to helping them get constructed,” said Sarah Sanford, manager for the East Coast Greenway in North Carolina and Virginia. “So we would get the assistance of all those staff members.”

House Bill 130 authorizes the state to spend money acquiring land for the East Coast Greenway but doesn’t provide any. Sanford said that’s one reason the bill sailed through the General Assembly, with only one dissenting vote.

Cooper’s office has not responded when asked whether he will sign the bill.

Another bill, House Bill 936, introduced last month would provide $20 million over two years to help develop land and paddle trails across the state. It hasn’t moved out of the House Appropriations Committee

“It’s more complicated,” Sanford said. “That bill is going to change a lot from draft to final version.”

Trails develop ‘slowly but surely’

The idea for the East Coast Greenway was hatched in New York City in the early 1990s by people who wanted to be able to safely ride bikes over long distances. The greenway has become a multi-use trail for cyclists, pedestrians and people in wheelchairs or other mobility devices.

The nonprofit East Coast Greenway Alliance, based in Durham, encourages development of the 3,000-mile trail but doesn’t own any of it. Each section is built and maintained by state or local governments or park systems.

“We designate the local pieces and link them together slowly but surely,” Sanford said. “And then over time we work with communities that haven’t been able to build trails yet to get them built and link them up to existing ones.”

In the Triangle, the East Coast Greenway encompasses parts or all of 17 different local trails, including Black Creek Greenway in Cary, Reedy Creek Trail through Umstead State Park and the American Tobacco Trail. A 13-mile section of the Neuse River Trail between Raleigh and Clayton is part of both the East Coast Greenway and Mountains-to-Sea Trail.

The East Coast Greenway Alliance is also helping launch the Triangle Trails Initiative, a local effort to plan and promote the growing network of trails in a 14-county region around Raleigh and Durham.

For more information about the East Coast Greenway, go to www.greenway.org/.