Thanks for posting the link to the VCP Putnam Trail construction schedule. I checked the link shortly after you posted your message and commented to DPR about the three different completion dates. I requesting a correction / update. What’s been added:
Project Update: The project is currently in legal review by staff members at Parks and the New York City Corporation Counsel.
Contrast this legal review with mud drying – the original subject of this thread – and I’m not optimistic.
Meanwhile, back to the thread’s original subject – mud drying on the VCP segment of the Old Put: where we currently ride is for the most part an old drainage ditch next to the adjacent engineered stabilized built-up embankment that was the Putnam Line's track bed. No surprise that where we try to ride is frequently a muddy mess.
If there’s any good news in this morass, it’s that some years ago, DPR abandoned its original proposal to build the trail in the muddy ditch. Current plans are to construct the trail, for the most part, on the existing engineered stabilized built-up embankment the railroad maintained for more than a century to keep its tracks out of the mud.