Next phase of Heritage Trail set for bids

Leg links Trafford to Murrysville

Contracts to build the third phase of the Westmoreland Heritage Trail may be awarded late next month.

Bid requirements to build nearly 6 miles of new trail between BY Park in Trafford and Duff Park in Murrysville were expected to be posted online on Thursday of this week. The bid deadline is Sept. 15.

“This is very exciting to get this project off the ground,” Malcolm Sias, director of the Westmoreland County Parks and Recreation Department, said Monday.

Construction is scheduled to begin March 1, 2017, and be completed in fall of that year, he said.

Mr. Sias estimates the project will cost between $1.7 million and $1.9 million, not including the bridges. The entire construction budget is $2.3 million.

The county has obtained $1.8 million in federal funding from the Transportation Alternatives Program through the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, plus $500,000 from the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, he said.

In addition to a bridge that has been built in Murrysville, an additional wooden deck bridge and two concrete bridges must be built over the next few months to carry the trail, Mr. Sias said.

His department has raised part of the money for the bridges, and the municipalities where the bridges will be located may provide labor and equipment, Mr. Sias said.

Part of the bridge money was raised through March for Parks events.

The section of the trail between Saltsburg and Slickville is very popular, said Tom Dittman of the Westmoreland Heritage Trail chapter of the Regional Trails Corp., the volunteer group that maintains the two sections of the trail already built and that will maintain the new segment.

Mr. Dittman said the first phase of the Westmoreland Heritage Trail, a section of about 5 miles from Saltsburg to Slickville, was completed in October 2008. The second phase, a segment of nearly 4 miles from Slickville to Delmont, was finished in October 2013.

Mr. Sias said the first phase cost about $1 million, and the second phase about $1.5 million.

Mr. Dittman said land has been acquired for the fourth phase of the trail between Murrysville and Export, but funding for that section has not yet been acquired.

Eventually, the Westmoreland Heritage Trail at Trafford could be connected to the Great Allegheny Passage bike trail, which runs from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C., by creating a trail from Trafford, through Pitcairn to the Rankin hot metal bridge near the Rankin car bridge and across the Monongahela River, he said.

A trolley line belonging to Pittsburgh Railways once ran along that route, Mr. Dittman said.