Tensions escalate over Northern Scenic Greenway bikepath project

Residents packed into a Town Hall meeting room and overflowed into the hallway on June 18 to voice their grievances for a bike path planned for Old Fall River Road.

Early on, someone called the police after shouting erupted between a resident and the Dartmouth Pathways Committee Chair. 

The path would be built on a public right-of-way, which the town can use for transportation purposes. Along Old Fall River Road, the right-of-way varies between 40 and 60 feet, depending on factors such as how close a home is to the road.

Within the right-of-way are the lanes and shoulders, and several feet of land extending on both sides of the street. This land can be used for both permanent and temporary projects, whether it’s construction work or bike paths.

Residents and project opponents expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of community input, communication and transparency when it came to the process of deciding whether to use Old Fall River Road for the path, which is part of the Northern Scenic Greenway.

The Northern Scenic Greenway is a proposed 9.8-mile long shared-use trail that will run through Westport, Dartmouth and New Bedford as part of the South Coast Bikeway, which will extend from Providence to Cape Cod once complete.

While the town has the right to use the land within the public right-of-way for transportation purposes, many residents, especially those who have lived on Old Fall River Road for decades, consider it to be part of their front yards.

There are currently no existing designs regarding how the path would be constructed, said Sandra Medeiros, the president of the South Coast Bikeway Alliance and a Dartmouth Pathways Committee member.

“There’s every effort being made to produce a pathway within the right-of-way,” Medeiros said.

The design stage for the Northern Scenic Greenway is set to begin soon, as the details for a contract with a consultant are being finalized.

Old Fall River Road was chosen for the project after the Southeastern Regional Planning & Economic Development District conducted feasibility studies in 2018 and the early 2020s. 

Other route options considered were a southern route, a Route 6 route and a rail corridor route. These roads weren’t chosen for reasons like environmental coordination challenges, safety concerns, the presence of wetlands and limited right-of-way use, according to a hand-out from the South Coast Bikeway Alliance.

In Phase I of the project, SRPEDD, a regional planning agency, took measurements of Old Fall River Road to determine whether there would be enough room to put a path within public right of way.

Medeiros said that there has been some misinformation on social media regarding project design, noting that the only part of the project confirmed so far has been that the route will go along Old Fall River Road.

She noted that while there are preliminary concept drawings of ways the bike path could be designed, they were created to “illustrate that the road had enough width to put a path within that right-of-way.”

The study and a preliminary design must be completed by June 2027, and is funded through a MassTrails grant.

Medeiros urged residents to visit the South Coast Bikeway Alliance’s website and Facebook page for more information on the project.

Once a contract is signed, the consultant company will know that public outreach is a “huge component of the project,” Medeiros said. A company has not been hired yet.

“There will be meetings in each of the three communities — multiple meetings — and multiple opportunities for people to weigh in in the initial stages,” she said.

Once the consultant gets results from analyzing the route, they will present proposed designs based on their findings. There will be additional opportunities for people to weigh in, according to Medeiros.

“The public will have opportunity to weigh in on the design to ask questions,” she said. “There’s a whole process coming forward with this preliminary design and engineering project.”

She noted that the path may end up looking different on different parts of the road, depending on “special circumstances,” such as S turns or historical features like stonewalls.

One resident at the committee meeting noted that he’s had cars crash into a stonewall at the front of his property, and said that if the stonewall is demolished for the project, the cars may instead crash into his home.

Resident Ed Pacheco, who doesn’t live on Old Fall River Road, said that homeowners have been “feeling left in the dark,” taking note of high tension and emotions during the meeting.

“We know that there are some constraints, we know that there are wetlands, we know that there are historic walls, we know that there are trees,” Medeiros said. “That will all be taken into consideration with the design that’s proposed.”