Get your motor running, head out on the...bike path. Easier riding may be in store soon for local cyclists.

By Harry Kane

Plans for two new bike path extensions were discussed at the latest conservation meeting at City Hall last week.  Conservation Commissioner, Michael Fager, who has served on the committee for nearly three years, elaborated on the timeline set forth for the construction of the new pathways.  “The first one is along the Mystic River at Route 28, the Wellington Street Bridge. We have permitted an undercarriage to connect two pieces of the bike path.  We just wanted to know when that was actually going to get under construction.”

According to Fager, the construction will begin in September of 2012. “Part of the reason is that a good portion of the payment for that project is going to come from Federal Investment Reality Trust, the people who are developing the Assembly Square project,” Fager clarified.

“The other piece is the linear park bike path extension from Cedar Street to Lowell Street,” Fager said.  The city is in phase two of the development of the community path and the extension will provide access to the new Green Line Station at Lowell Street.  “Right now that old railroad bed is the construction road for the MaxPac development project.  They’re not gonna extend that path until the MaxPac is done and the reason that that railroad bed is being used by MaxPac is that their construction vehicles go in and out there as mitigation for the neighborhood. When that project is finished or near finished they’re going to finish that extension of the bike path.”

An extension of the community path to Somerville Junction Park had been part of the second phase of this project, but those plans have been delayed.  The park is located halfway between Central Street and Lowell Street. “It was built a few years ago and the plan for Junction Park is that it will be a park on that segment of the bike path which is eventually going to be built. That’s the plan, but right now it’s just a little park with no connection to the bike path,” according to Fager.