Hello Everyone,

Efforts are being made to bring more rail trails for alternative transportation, exercise and recreational use to Manchester. A lot of folks have been using the 1-mile south Manchester Trailway behind the Shaw's shopping center on south Willow Street.

And the Hands Across the Merrimack bridge that opened up this past April has seen a lot of use, along with the ¾ -mile Heritage trail on the east end of the bridge too. The next step is getting it connected to the other future rail trails on each side to maximize its potential.

There are a lot of gaps left in the rail trails as they exist now. We have a lot of work to get them all connected together in the future. But it will be worth the effort in the long run — the great thing is that most of these rail trails go past businesses and shopping centers.

A new private/public partnership group has been formed called Manchester Moves. They are in the process of arranging sponsors and funding to help complete the rail trails. They have a website that is under construction at: www.manchestermoves.org/ You can sign-up for their e-mail newsletter updates.

The next meeting will be Oct 30th 11:30 – 1:00 at 155 Dow street (Levalle Bresinger office).

We need more volunteers to help out with an expanding rail trails advocacy effort:

One part of that will be the promotion and publicity side. We need volunteers to help run a rail trails table at a few events and festivals held during the spring, summer and fall.

The other part will be helping with clean-up and maintaining the few sections of rail trails that are already built, along with the Hands Across the Merrimack bridge and the Heritage trail. This will involve trail work day events to maximize the number of volunteers to get more tasks done at a time.

Please feel free to PM me for more information. I have maps and current information that I will be glad to send out to those interested in helping with this project. There are several different rail trail groups in southern New Hampshire and some more will be forming in the near future to take care of certain sections that are being constructed in Manchester.