I have a goal of riding every named Rail-Trail in New York State. There are many more railbeds not used for trains anymore which are also ridable. They are usually unnamed, unsigned, and unpublished. I speculate that this is because the owner is either indifferent or away. I've ridden some of these but I'm more interested in getting the named trails ridden first. I'm uploading them to OpenStreetMap as I go.
I rode a huge number of trails a week ago -- 22 trails in all! It's taken me this long to process the GPS traces into tracks. 179 miles in four hard days of riding. Only three of these trails are paved. The others are grass or dirt. Here's the whole list: East Ithaca Recreational Trail, Lackawanna Trail, Pat McGee Trail, Village of Sherman Recreational Trail, Ralph C. Sheldon Jr Nature Trail, Nancy B. Diggs Nature Trail, Paul and Nancy Webb Nature Trail, Laurie A. Baer Nature Trail, Alison Wells Ney Nature Trail, Brocton Area Recreational Trail, Portage Trail, Cheektowaga Bike Path, Clarence Akron Pathways, Clarence Newstead Trail, Erie Attica Trail, Great Bend Park Trail, Hilton Hojack Trail, Lehigh Valley Trail (Mendon to Victor), Auburn Trail, Trolley Trail (Rochester, Syracuse & Eastern), Oneida Rail Trail. Since the last update, I rode the Kaaterskill Rail Trail.
The first trail ride for which I have a date is June of 2004. So this has been a ten-year project for me. Given that I'm not done yet, and they're continually making new trails, it looks like I've got another set of trails to ride.
Trails I've ridden:
Trails I haven't (yet) ridden:
posted at: 14:36 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
2.96 km 9708.34 feet 1.84 mi 1202.00 seconds 20.03 minutes 0.33 hours 5.51 mi/hr
Oneida Rail Trail. They have ambitious plans, but for right now, they have one mile of dead-end rail-trail.
posted at: 05:59 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
50.63 km 166103.26 feet 31.46 mi 19185.00 seconds 319.75 minutes 5.33 hours 5.90 mi/hr
There are a bunch of hiking trails in the Victor area. I started on the Lehigh Valley Trail. Rode it to the Trolley Trail, rode that north and south to its apparent ends. Rode east on the Auburn Trail, taking the footpath routing going east and the bicycle routing on my return. Rode it to the end and a bit more to pick up some needed refreshments. It peters out at the eastern end, coming little more than a sidewalk in a residential development.
posted at: 05:59 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
14.84 km 48687.96 feet 9.22 mi 5413.00 seconds 90.22 minutes 1.50 hours 6.13 mi/hr
The Portage Trail / Trolley Trail. The traditional Native American portage route between Lake Erie and Chautauqua Lake ran along approximately the same route chosen by the trolley that ran between the two lakes, hence the name. Only a portion is open to the public, and even that is a bit wet in places so the trail is routed off the railbed in those places.
posted at: 05:58 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
3.70 km 12146.03 feet 2.30 mi 1024.00 seconds 17.07 minutes 0.28 hours 8.09 mi/hr
The Avon, NY Erie-Attica Trail is very short, but significant, because it goes over the Genesee River on an abandoned bridge, and it connects up with the Genesee Valley Greenway.
posted at: 05:58 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
9.73 km 31916.45 feet 6.04 mi 2732.00 seconds 45.53 minutes 0.76 hours 7.97 mi/hr
Found a bit of the Hojack (New York Central nee Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg) east of Hilton which was ridable. Lots of weeds where there were no ATV riders, and lots of mud puddles where there were. Rode back on the highway rather than push through the weeds again, some of which were prickers.
posted at: 05:58 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
5.58 km 18317.86 feet 3.47 mi 1433.00 seconds 23.88 minutes 0.40 hours 8.72 mi/hr
Before it got too dark, I hit the extension of the Webster Hojack Trail which I had ridden in 2010 but apparently have no record of having ridden.
posted at: 05:58 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
39.19 km 128569.01 feet 24.35 mi 13061.00 seconds 217.68 minutes 3.63 hours 6.71 mi/hr
The Laurie A. Baer and Alison Wells Ney Nature Trails and the Brocton Area Recreational Trail (BART). Again, they run into each other, so the only way to ride them separately is to start at the junction between the two where there is a trailhead. I didn't know about the trailhead, so I started at a point on the Baer Trail where there was parking. The combination of these trails goes mostly from the village of Mayville down to the NS/CSX tracks in Brocton.
posted at: 05:58 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
8.09 km 26545.57 feet 5.03 mi 2045.00 seconds 34.08 minutes 0.57 hours 8.85 mi/hr
Cheektowaga Bike Path just runs on the side of a railroad yard where there were some tracks. It doesn't run exactly on one railroad bed, just mostly. Paved the whole way, so it's quite tame.
posted at: 05:58 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
7.85 km 25747.48 feet 4.88 mi 1674.00 seconds 27.90 minutes 0.47 hours 10.49 mi/hr
The East Ithaca Recreational Trail. Originally a spur off the Lehigh Valley built to serve Cornell University's coal-burning steam plant.
posted at: 05:58 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
10.73 km 35197.25 feet 6.67 mi 3511.00 seconds 58.52 minutes 0.98 hours 6.84 mi/hr
The Paul and Nancy Webb and Nancy B. Diggs Nature Trails. They run one into the other, so I rode the Webb, then Diggs, then back on the Webb. There isn't a real trailhead with good parking on the Diggs trail, so I went into the village of Mayfield to get on the trail.
posted at: 05:58 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
10.62 km 34844.15 feet 6.60 mi 2832.00 seconds 47.20 minutes 0.79 hours 8.39 mi/hr
Rode the railbed through the village of Mayville and a bit north of it. Ran into a section where the railbed was flooded and the trail runs a bit west of it. That also got flooded, so I turned around. Didn't see the point of struggling when I had so much more railbed to ride that day.
posted at: 05:58 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
14.02 km 46007.86 feet 8.71 mi 4211.00 seconds 70.18 minutes 1.17 hours 7.45 mi/hr
The Ralph C. Sheldon Jr. Nature Trail starts form the north side of Sherman and goes a couple of road crossings to Summerville. Somebody built their driveway on the railbed, so the trail stops there.
posted at: 05:58 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
4.47 km 14674.68 feet 2.78 mi 1348.00 seconds 22.47 minutes 0.37 hours 7.42 mi/hr
Rode the Great Bend Trail, which connects Great Bend Park to the Lehigh Valley Trail at Rochester Junction. It's much shorter than I had hoped it would be, but they managed to preserve three railroad bridges in the process, so it's all for the good.
posted at: 05:58 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
1.27 km 4164.49 feet 0.79 mi 409.00 seconds 6.82 minutes 0.11 hours 6.94 mi/hr
The Village of Sherman Recreational Trail is longer than the portion I rode. It leaves the railbed and wanders along the creek to a parking lot in the center of town. I only rode the railbed portion, and I went past the curve in the trail to wander out on the bridge over the creek. They have an ineffectual bit of snow fence there, which people have already trampled into the dust.
posted at: 05:58 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
8.51 km 27918.73 feet 5.29 mi 2928.00 seconds 48.80 minutes 0.81 hours 6.50 mi/hr
Elmira's Lackawanna Trail. They're planning to extend it over a bridge and run it along the Southern Tier Expressway. I bicycled that in April of 2011 shortly after they had finished surfacing the trail.
posted at: 05:58 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
55.19 km 181060.93 feet 34.29 mi 12755.00 seconds 212.58 minutes 3.54 hours 9.68 mi/hr
Both the Clarence Akron Pathways and Clarence Newstead Trails. It's paved the whole way, with good signage. It seems to be heavily used by snowmobilers in the winter, so it's clear-cut 30' wide. No shade at all, nothing to block the wind. Still, it's paved, so one cannot complain too much.
posted at: 05:58 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
40.33 km 132312.36 feet 25.06 mi 9579.00 seconds 159.65 minutes 2.66 hours 9.42 mi/hr
The Pat McGee Trail north of Salamanca. Pat McGee was a New York State legislator with a soft spot in his heart for rail-trails. He spent some taxpayer dollars to help some people build rail-trails, including this one. Instead of naming it after the taxpayers, though, they named it after Pat McGee.
posted at: 05:58 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
