October 23, 2004

Biking through Pennsylvania

An interesting story of recycled public works and their current use. The NY Times has an article on an abandoned section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike being turned into bike paths. bq. Biking Dark Tunnels and Wide Lanes on a Lost Highway Pulling into the parking lot of the Ramada Inn in Breezewood, Pa., you'd never suspect it was the gateway to a lost bit of highway history. At one end of a garish commercial strip where the Pennsylvania Turnpike meets the main road south toward Washington, the hotel resembles roadside America at its most generic. But around in back, a rutted dirt road leads away from the gravel parking lot and down a short embankment to an old highway, its concrete surface a kind of mid-20th-century matte gray. bq. Four lanes wide, carefully engineered and undisturbed by driveways or public access roads, it stretches eastward, utterly deserted, for miles. bq. What a place for a bike ride. bq. And it gets better. Just down the road, the pavement, which used to be a part of the turnpike, literally heads into the Allegheny Mountains, twice plunging into the eerie darkness of a hillside. "It's unreal to go through a milelong dark tunnel on a bike," said Matt Imler, who speaks from experience. He is an assistant manager at a Breezewood outdoor sports outfitter and one of the adventurous cyclists who take the tunnels as a challenge. Very cool! I grew up in Pennsylvania and used to ride on the Penn Turnpike a lot -- it was one of the first real models for the current Interstate Highway System. Dwight Delano Eisenhower as President laid down the framework to expand this to a national system (even in Hawai'i) Until a year ago, Jen and I used to live in Seattle and there, people have been taking over abandoned railroad rights of way and converting them to bike paths -- the best known one of this area is the BGT - Burke-Gilman Trail Hat tip to dangerousmeta Posted by DaveH at October 23, 2004 9:50 PM