Town moving to complete pedestrian trail
Recognizing the public’s pent up desire to get out and recreate, the town has taken the first steps to complete a missing piece of its Erie Canal Towpath Trail.
The off-road trail is found along Towpath Road in the southern part of the municipality. This trail link project will fill in a missing section on the road between Beach Road and Clamsteam Road.
After receiving a $241,000 federal recreation grant through the Office of New York State Parks and Historic Preservation, the town issued a Request for Proposals in January to design and oversee the project.
The completion of this link or gap in the trail allows off-road access to the Erie Canal Community Connector Trail between Halfmoon and Clifton Park which terminates at the eastern end at Clamsteam Road.
As part of the federal grant stipulations the town must make a matching contribution of 25 percent or $60,250 to the project. At the March 13 Town Board meeting, the board awarded MJ Engineering and Surveying of Clifton Park a $60,250 contract to design and oversee completion of the trail link.
The project includes the construction of an eightfoot-wide multi-use path approximately 4,100-feet long. The design work includes a 200-foot long boardwalk, road markings, traffic and wayfinding signage, crosswalks and stone bollards.
The services requested in the contract include design development through construction inspection and project close-out.
Construction of the 4,100-foot-long multi-use path in Halfmoon will give a complete feel to the fivemile-long Erie Canal Community Connector Trail. The trail was designed to take hikers, bicyclists, and joggers from Vischer Ferry in Clifton Park off-road to the Crescent Bridge in Halfmoon and back.
The Connector Trail was on the planning boards in both towns for nearly 15 years before enough grant money was obtained to start the required upgrades to the (1835 improved) Erie Canal towpath in 2015.
Last November the Town of Clifton Park held a ribbon cutting for a bridge it had built over the Erie Canal to the towpath on the southern side of the canal. The new bridge allows
those who want to take a walk along the trail to get on or off at a point that’s approximately the halfway point.
The Erie Canal Community Connector Trail goes past the canal’s historic lock 19, along the southern
boundary of the Vischer Ferry Nature Preserve, over the inlet to Wagers Pond to the embankment that supports the Northway’s Twin Bridges.
From the base of the bridges those using the trail can make their way to the
Klamr Tavern and Marina (formerly Klamsteam Tavern). The new Halfmoon project will close the trail’s gap allowing anyone using the Connector Trail to make their way off-road all the way to the Crescent Bridge in Halfmoon.