Greensburg is planning a $389,000 project to improve the Five Star Trail, making the popular running and biking destination more accessible to city residents.
“We’re basically trying to improve the connections between the neighborhoods that are adjacent to the Five Star Trail,” said Jeff Richards, Westmoreland County parks planning coordinator and vice president of the Five Star Trail chapter of the Regional Trail Corporation.
Read more »While living in Monaca, Dr. Vincent Troia frequently rode his bike to the Montour Trail in Coraopolis. He followed the Ohio River down Bicycle PA Route A, along Route 51, despite the high-speed traffic. Troia also said he would bike on the Little Beaver Creek Greenway trail, just across the state border in Ohio.
“I was thinking, ‘boy, it would be nice to just connect the two trails, and then we’d have a beautiful network, a bike network,’” said Troia, who now serves as president of the Ohio River Trail Council (ORTC). The nonprofit organization works to protect trails and to provide active transportation networks in the Ohio River Valley and surrounding areas.
Since its founding in 2009, the nonprofit ORTC has completed multiple bicycle feasibility studies to improve safety for cyclists. The studies encompassed an area along the Ohio River from Coraopolis to the Pennsylvania-Ohio border and examined possibilities for safer, off-road trails, according to Troia. Now, ORTC is developing a more comprehensive bicycle suitability study.
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