Paving the way on the Panhandle Rail Trail
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WEIRTON -- With assistance from the city's Public Works Department, the Weirton Board of Parks & Recreation began asphalt paving of the Panhandle Rail Trail last week.
The effort used $45,000 raised by the Park Board through local contributors, as the first phase of plans to eventually pave the full length of West Virginia's portion of the multi-state trail. The Weirton section is owned by the City of Weirton, overseen by the Park Board and maintained by a group of volunteers with the Panhandle Rail Trail Committee.
"The city seal says, 'success in unity', and this is the kind of effort Weirton's forefathers had in mind when those words were chosen," Parks Director Coty Shingle said. "I've reminded people of those words many times, but they bear repeating when you see efforts like this one."
Shingle said the teamwork doesn't stop with just the city and the Park Board, but also extends to the local financial contributors: the Mary Jane Brooks Foundation, Brooke County Commission and Hancock County Commission.
"We've had to sort of sell everyone on our vision for this project all along the way," Shingle said. "When you're looking at four-mile trail it's hard to get excited about being a stakeholder in the project because it's such an enormous task and materials are so expensive nowadays, but I hope this generates some real excitement in the contributors, laborers, city departments and users of the trail to see what can be accomplished when we all work together."
The Park Board set a goal in late 2018 to pave the entire trail as quickly as possible. With the first phase of the paving project complete, administrators and crews are preparing to put more asphalt down in 2023 once the Park Board receives a notice to proceed with its $90,000 West Virginia Department of Highways Transportation Alternatives Grant, which is made up of a combination of state and federal funding.
"This whole thing has been like a puzzle we've been trying to put together," Shingle said. "We went into it knowing it was unlikely that a single entity would be able to provide the funding necessary to pave the whole trail so we started asking for whatever funding we could get and planned to take it one step at a time, knowing we'd eventually get there."
Paving began at the West Virginia/Pennsylvania state line and proceeded northwest toward Colliers Station. Shingle said the Park Board determined to start the project there instead of the main trial head off Harmon Creek Road because the Pennsylvania portion of the trail was already paved all the way to the Montour Trail.