........ Getting to see scenery like this ain't half bad, either:
That is awesome Pete.
Where I live we have a rail trail, the major feature of The Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor (PA). Mostly a rail trail along the Lehigh River but on the Delaware (and parts of the Lehigh) the trail is on the old canal towpath. All but the southern most 10 miles of the trail, which is actually 140 miles long, is scenic as can be. Great views and awesome scenery.
Anyway the D&L as they call the actual trail is billed as 165 miles long with a few minor gaps. Most of the gaps, there are four major gaps, have infrastructure in place to close the gap or at least have some or all of the funding to close the gaps but the machine will not allow this. The D&L for their part gets a lot of it's funding and from donations and they use a lot of volunteer labor to run things. To put it in simple form, the D&L doesn't own any of the trail, they advise the owners (towns and so forth) on how to obtain grant money. Their main task is to fund raise to keep themselves in business. They are good at fundraising.
All of this comes at the expense of the truth. I don't want to say the D&L actually lies but they do take liberties and make promises and predictions that they I believe know in advance are not accurate. The biggest most famous example is in Carbon County, the county has built a 250' trail bridge over the Lehigh River in Jim Thorpe. This bridge cost over 4 million dollars. It was dedicated last June but not opened and remains closed. The D&L and other agencies say that work on the eastern bank will be completed in the Spring (2019) thus allowing the bridge to open. Up until about a month before the dedication there was no real hint that the bridge opening was going to have a big delay. The work on the east bank is tied to work on the waste water treatment plant. There is no way the work will be completed in the Spring, they haven't even started the work, will not start it until the winter thaw and the work costs one million dollars (to give you an idea of the scale of the work) work which no one said anything about when the bridge was in the planning stage. In the mean time the outfitters that service the area are holding the bag waiting for word on when the bridge will be opened. It might seem trivial but the canal that it will connect to is, without the bridge, a 4 mile dead end road with no outlets. Opening the bridge will put 100s of visitors in the down town of Jim Thorpe per day, visitors they hope are eager to spend money.
The D&L urged businesses in Carbon County to make plans to receive 1000s of visitors riding mountain bikes on the trail when the bridge opens, it was supposed to open in 2016, then 2017, 2018 now they say Spring 2019. All eyes are on the east bank work however the west bank empties out into the county (pay) parking lot. There is money to build a bypass trail around the parking lot and it is obvious to me at least that the east bank work and thus the bridge opening will be delayed for as long as possible because having the trail go thru the parking lot is like having a bicycle trail go through a WalMart parking lot. Dangerous.
So everyone regardless of their feelings on the bridge is pissed and the closed bridge right there in Jim Thorpe stands there like a scab that refuses to heal. Opening the bridge will connect the canal to the Lehigh Gorge trail which has spectacular views and is an easy ride. The D&L has stopped talking about the bridge in their fundraising letters to members and the local media doesn't print updates. It all comes down to the problem of raising money to close gaps when there is no chance that a 90% completed project is going to be completed in a reasonable amount of time, rather it seems remaining 10% will take another 2 years to complete. Huge public embarrassment. And then if there are no gaps left, how do you bully people into making donations? The tactic being employed is classic carrot and stick. The trail will someday be 165 miles long I have no doubt about that but it will be at least another 15 years before that happens. The upper 10 miles is 10 years away for sure, the lower 10 is going to be very difficult to finish as the trail will need to cross several major highways right outside of Philly and are very big safety problems.