I just heard some good news. The City will build a flight of stairs next spring. On the big scale that’s a small thing but it’s an important part of a bigger picture.
Four years ago the City converted an unused mile of railroad track into the Upper Falls Greenway which runs behind Needham St from National Lumber to the Needham border at the Charles River. Once built it quickly became a much loved amenity of our neighborhood. On any day of the week you’ll see lots of people walking, jogging, bicycling, walking their dogs or just hanging out. It’s also become a new public space in Upper Falls that has been used for everything from a sculpture park, to a parade, to a bocci court.
Despite the fact that the Upper Falls Greenway gets a lot of use, the one criticism we often hear is that it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s a mile long path that dead ends at a river. Just below that dead end, down a very steep embankment, is another little known but lovely 1/4 mile path along the river’s edge called the Charles River Pathway. Unfortunately, unless you’re a goat, there’s no easy way to get down there from the Greenway. So these new stairs that will soon be built will connect those two relatively short walking paths together. While that’s certainly a good idea and a nice improvement it may strike you as a bit underwhelming. It’s an important piece of a much larger puzzle though.
If you take a few steps back and look at the big picture there has been a much larger plan that’s been unfolding in slow motion over the past 30 year with pieces continuing to be steadily added. Many years ago the states’s Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) had a vision of how the Charles River’s riverfront can and should be turned into a pedestrian resource for the public. At that time the public only had access to the river at a few disconnected places (Boston’s Esplanade, Brighton’s Soldier Field Road, etc). Over the last 30 years the DCR has steadily and incrementally filled in piece after piece so that today you can walk on a continuous and very pleasant riverside pedestrian path from Boston’s Science Museum to Newton’s Comm Ave by the Marriott.
In recent months the DCR unveiled plans for some more pieces in the years ahead – connecting Riverside to Lower Falls and then Lower Falls to RT9 in Upper Falls. The ethos of all this is that each time you connect one pedestrian path to another, the value of the whole thing to the public goes way up.
Now back to the Upper Falls Greenway. The City also has longer range plans to connect the Greenway in the other direction along the river to Braceland Park on Chestnut St. About three years ago, as part of the Nexus project on Needham St, an old railroad spur line was turned into a new path that connects the Greenway out to Needham St. Future longer range plans intend to continue that spur trail across Needham St, over to Christina St, and over an unused railroad bridge across the river to connect to existing paths that run to Cutler Park in Needham and beyond.
So yes, one stairway isn’t much by itself but each time we connect one walking path to another the value of the whole trail network keeps climbing. This slow moving process is frustrating for some one with as short an attention span as me, but even I can appreciate each one of these new pieces and each new improvement in the whole.
Awesome! I’m not a goat, but I made a fairly athletic slide down the hill from the Greenway to the Charles River Path a few years ago (in the snow). And thanks, Jerry, for the update on other future plans giving the public access to the river and to other paths.
Very good news! Now, if only we could get that missing section in Needham built, there would eventually be a direct path from Route 9 in Newton down to Medfield Center.
@Newtoner – Yes that was the original vision and I would love to see that happen some day. Unfortunately that day is a lot further away now since the bridge over Route 95 was dismantled as part of the highway widening a few years back
So long as the railroad right-of-way on the Needham side remains intact that possibility will remain some day in the distant future.
Jerry, thanks for your persistence and your advocacy! This is wonderful news! And while Needham Selectmen stood in the way last time, there still is an opportunity to extend the trail across a beautiful vista point on the Charles and connect with Needham commercial areas ripe for development and a great network of aqueduct trails not too far off which lead to Wellesley. This would require some cooperation from our friends in Needham. And who knows, maybe that addition could lead to further opportunities down the line someday.
@Jerry: They just built bridges over Route 9 AND Route 30 for the Cochituate Rail Trail. It’s possible! Not holding my breath though…
Jerry – Thanks for laying this out clearly for the readers and for mentioning a number of these little connector projects. I’ve been heavily involved in the Christina St bridge one that you mention. Another recent proposal that the Friends of Hemlock Gorge & Friends of the Quinobequin took to Mass DOT and DCR (with help from Rep. Balser) would connect Hemlock Gorge safely to the Quinobequin trail via the Route 9 underpass. Currently, there are no crossing features at all for pedestrians (or people in wheelchairs) and these two parks are a stone’s throw apart. Mass DOT’s initial review of the site before they design anything suggests that reconstructing this double intersection and adding pedestrian safety measures would actually make it significantly safer for drivers as well. Many local residents know how poor the visibility is in those intersections and how many accidents happen.
This is great news! I’ve had many close calls traversing that incline.
@Bill Humphrey – I’m happy to hear that you’re involved in the Christina St bridge project. That project is the key one that will turn the Upper Falls Greenway from a neighborhood pathway into part of much much bigger network of trails.
Yes, connecting Hemlock Gorge to Quinnibequin is another great step – sorry I missed that one.
Does anyone know what the deal is with the lock on the gate to the old railroad bridge on Christina Street? Is the bridge unsafe? I’m pretty sure you can access it from the Needham side.
@Bill B – Take this with a grain of salt until someone more knowledgeable replies. I think the very short distance from Christina St to the entrance of the bridge is private property – i.e. the end of the parking lot of the commercial building at Needham & Christina. I believe the property owner blocked the access to the bridge from their property … but I could be wrong about that.
@Jerry. You correctly noted the work that the City did to make the UF Greenway a reality, but you forgot to mention the fact that it was your work and the efforts of others in Upper Falls that teed the ball up for the City to hit. A lot of ideas for opening up the aqueducts and stitching them together were floating through my head in the late 60’s and early 70s when I’d come home from DC and walk these areas. Trespassing onto these lands was technically prohibited by the MDC, but it was never enforced because not that many people walked or biked on them. Very few people thought anything like I imagined would ever come to fruition. I’m glad a younger generation saw the possibilities and is acting to make it all happen.
@Bill B and @Jerry, that’s correct, in June of 2019 a new CEO took over at the Price Center and unilaterally decided to lock the gate on the Christina Street bridge, closing it off for the first time in 100 years. I asked him to reopen it but he basically said that he can do whatever he wants. And he’s right! It turns out that the MBTA very conveniently sold them the ROW over the old tracks through their parking lot for a few thousand bucks.
As far as the extension of the Greenway to Needham goes, that was of course blocked by a Needham selectman and now it doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell because Needham’s finances are by far the most screwed up of all its peers – thanks in large part to a couple of fugly eyesore fire stations being supplied by Consigliere Bros. for $70 million (and rising). On the plus side, if past performance is any indicator of future results then most of the Needham Select Board will probably flee to Fort Myers in 2021.