Central CT town readies $1.5 million trail project; more regional connections planned

As communities along the state’s longest rail trail work to add connections to other neighborhoods and even nearby towns, Simsbury is getting ready for a nearly $1.5 million project to give trail users access to Curtiss Park in the Tariffville section.

The new link will be just south of another, longer-term project that designers envision as a way to connect Bloomfield and much of eastern Simsbury to the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail.

Over an even longer period, trail advocates are looking to connect the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail through Bloomfield to the Connecticut River in Windsor or Harford, and then connect to a network of trails that spread out from East Hartford through numerous east-of the-river communities.

The immediate project is vastly less ambitious, but should be a major boon to Simsbury residents, according to cycling advocates and town officials.

“We’re going from the trail, which runs along Route 10, over into Curtiss Park. It’s been our dream that kids can ride their bikes to soccer practice there,” said Tom Roy, Simsbury’s public works director.

Just a week ago, Roy heard from two adults who used Route 315 to cycle to Curtiss to watch a young relative play. Although it’s possible to do that, the road wasn’t designed for cyclists: The lanes get narrow and sight lines are poor near a curve at Terry’s Plain Road.

Simsbury’s plan is to pave a dedicated path for pedestrians and cyclists from where Route 315, also known as Tariffville Road, crosses the trail near Route 10. The new 10-foot-wide asphalt path will run alongside Route 315, creating a car-free connection from the center of town to Curtiss Park.

“The easy parts are done, now it’s the harder sections,” he said.

The Capital Region Council of Governments has been working with central Connecticut towns on plans for a variety of spurs and links off the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail, which runs between New Haven and the Massachusetts line in Suffield with a several-mile gap in Plainville.

CRCOG wants to link more communities and neighborhoods to the trail, and planners are looking at a possible Simsbury-to-Hartford connector that would begin with a new path from the main trail heading east into Bloomfield along the route of a long-abandoned rail spur. The new trail would follow that route; the major cost would be installing a new bridge over the Farmington River where the old railroad span has been removed.

That route would cut eastward to reach the recently built trail along Route 189 in Bloomfield. Ultimately, planners want to link it from there to the waterfront along the Connecticut River and then to Hartford, where a river crossing to East Hartford could link dozens of communities east and west of the river.