Schuylkill Canal Association

Spring 2003 Newsletter

The President's Report: Tony Geyelin
More change is coming to our canal. The Schuylkill River Trail – to many of us more colloquially the “bike trail” – is scheduled to be extended from the Oaks area to Mont Clare and then over the Schuylkill River into Chester County. The most likely route for this section of the bike trail will be along the unpaved section of our towpath downstream from the Mont Clare-Phoenixville (Rt.29) bridge.

Some of us will be excited by the positive impact the bike trail will have on public awareness and appreciation of the canal. Others will be concerned with how a towpath, so fragile in many places, can be expected to accommodate the anticipated volume of bike and pedestrian traffic. Still others will focus on how the bike trail will affect the ecology and beauty of this heretofore quiet and bucolic section of the canal. I expect many of us share most of these thoughts and concerns.

The Schuylkill Canal Association is committed to actively working with Montgomery County to insure that the environmental and engineering issues raised by extending a bike trail along our towpath are carefully and adequately addressed. The first step in this process is, of course, to identify what the issues are, and on Sunday afternoon, January 26, 2003 the Board of Directors and a number of interested Association members met at the Locktender's House to do just that.

At this meeting we identified sixteen separate issues for discussion with the Montgomery County bike path planners. These included the need to ensure the trail engineering was adequate to protect the integrity of the towpath; concerns about the environmental and economic impact of the trail on the canal and its surrounding communities; the importance of ensuring biker/pedestrian trail uses will not unduly interfere with the multiple other current uses of this section of the canal (e.g. fishing, canoeing); the desirability of reaching a binding agreement covering the maintenance of the bike trail; and the necessity of involving the public and all interested organizations (e.g. Upper Providence Township, various state agencies) in the planning process.

These discussion points have been forwarded to Montgomery County, and our Executive Director and the chairman of the Association’s Grounds and Waterways Committee have scheduled a walking tour of the lower towpath with County officials.
I urge all of you to take as active a role as your interests and schedules permit in helping the Association deal with the issues and opportunities the bike trail presents.