***This was on Mcall.com. Hope its OK to repost it here**
***$70,000 per 6/10 mile??***
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Lehigh to get grant for rail trail
County to get $35,000 in matching funds for Delaware-Lehigh path.
By Sarah Fulton | Special to The Morning Call
March 13, 2008
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Lehigh County has been offered a 50-50 matching grant to extend nearly a mile of the Delaware and Lehigh Trail from north of Slatington to the Carbon County border.
The Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor has offered Lehigh County $35,000 to complete the work. The county plans to match the grant with another $35,000 from its five-year capital plan.
Commissioners held the first reading of a bill Wednesday that calls for the improvement of 0.6 miles of trail in Washington Township near the Lehigh Gap Nature Center. The addition is just one of many short stretches needed to complete the 165-mile D&L Trail, which follows abandoned railroad beds from White Haven, Luzerne County, to Bristol, Bucks County.
The money will pay for design, permits, installation of trailbed materials, signs, guardrails, fencing and gates. The new trail section will connect with completed portions in Carbon County.
''[In Lehigh County] there's more uncompleted than completed,'' said Jan Creedon, county director of general services.
In 2002, the county bought 11.5 miles of the 17-mile abandoned railroad bed that, locally, spans the county from Washington Township to Catasauqua. Lehigh County is the center portion of the D&L Trail that courses through five counties: Luzerne, Carbon, Lehigh, Northampton and Bucks.
''Once this is completed, we'll have approximately two miles completed out of the 111/2 purchased,'' county Commissioner Dean Browning said.
Other parts of the trail are accessible by the public but they have not been improved to ensure usability.
The Heritage Corridor has touted the trail as a regional recreational opportunity that also serves as an economic and historic preservation tool. The trail draws cyclists and hikers who patronize historical towns along the way. The grant offered to the county must be spent by September.
''We were happy they came to us,'' Creedon said.
Lehigh County has worked for more than a dozen years to acquire the local unused railroad land that comprises the trail.
''This has been a long procedure,'' commissioner Chairman Percy Dougherty said. ''It's gone through three county executives and two railroad companies.''
The next goal for the county is to acquire or gain easements on more railroad land from Cementon to Catasauqua. Commissioners will vote in two weeks on whether or not to amend the existing capital plan to spend money on the trail improvements.
Sarah Fulton is a freelance writer