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RINGWOOD - Residents voice views on hiking and biking trails
(by Teresa Edmond - Staff Writer - August 13, 2008)
RINGWOOD - The borough may have a journey ahead on the path to realizing its plan for developing more biking and walking opportunities, but thanks to plenty of input at last Wednesday night’s meeting, it could reach that destination.
The Aug. 6 bicycle and pedestrian meeting had a healthy turnout of at least 40 as locals and a Morristown-based consulting firm shaped a vision for making the borough friendlier to those walking or riding a bike. The meeting was held in the Martin J. Ryerson Middle School cafetorium.
The event proved to be more of an interactive workshop than a one-sided project presentation, as the RBA Group and residents discussed possible trail locations, trail surfaces like dirt and concrete, and amenities like outdoor lampposts.
"Ringwood is an outdoor recreation community, and it'd be nice to take advantage of it," said Mayor Walter Davison. "We're a very large community, but we're limited about how to get around.”
Through the state Department of Transportation, which hired the RBA Group for the project, the borough is seeking more walking and biking windows to promote ecotourism and safety.
RBA has assisted other towns, like Maplewood and Middlesex, in crafting their own visions of a bicycle and pedestrian plan.
Meeting attendees were especially enthusiastic about a special mapping exercise. The attendees were split up into three groups and gathered around tables where huge maps of the borough were laid out. Armed with different colored markers, each group had to mark off which areas are ripe with opportunity for bike and walking paths, which should be kept off, and which areas are absolute musts for trails.
Among suggested locations to build trails were around the lakes and the abandoned railroad bed at the Wanaque Reservoir, where a railroad track once existed but has been removed. To this day, a dirt track remains there. Advocates like Davison said that constructing a trail there would make good use of a facility no longer in service.
On the flip side of that Wanaque Reservoir debate, people like Dag Madara, a data management specialist for the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission, worried that a trail there could welcome people to contaminate the drinking water, which residents across the state depend on. It could even open the door for terrorists to tamper with the supply.
“Since 9/11, things have changed. We have to take security very seriously,” he said. “Our security vehicles travel up and down that reservoir to make sure no one is doing something they shouldn’t.”
Environmental Commission Chair Joanne Atlas said that the “interconnectivity between neighborhoods is a high priority.”
Because funds are limited, she said, careful decisions must be made about where to create the trails, so that they do link neighborhoods and meet other goals.
“We have to decide how to get the greatest bang for its buck,” Atlas said.
Resident Liz Manzella recommended that the borough look to other communities for examples of biking and walking trails while developing its own plan.
“(Let’s look) at options other people have. If it’s been done, why redo it? Let’s look at what others have done,” she said.
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