New Jersey - Essex County to Jersey City, bike and walking trail

New Jersey will purchase nine miles of an abandoned rail line that runs from Montclair to Jersey City to create the Essex-Hudson Greenway, Gov. Phil Murphy announced Friday.

The project is decades in the making, and comes after more than three years of negotiations between its proponents and owner Norfolk Southern Corporation. The state will purchase the 135-acre property that runs through eight towns — Montclair, Glen Ridge, Bloomfield, Belleville, Newark, Kearny, Secaucus and Jersey City — setting it aside for open space as a recreational bike and walking trail.

https://www.montclairlocal.news/2021/11/12/essex-hudson-greenway-to-become-a-reality/

I’ll be long gone from NJ when this happens, but still very good news. I live in Essex County and there is a no-mans, or should I say, no-bike, zone between Essex county and New York City and the riverside cities of Newark and Jersey City.

Here’s the strava heat map - brighter the colour, the more bike rides recoreded.


The few pale lines including the Verrazzano Bridge from Staten Island to NYC are from people leaving their GPS units running while the bike is on the car. That bridge cannot be crossed on bike - something people have also be petitioning for decades.

Anyhoo - I think this is fantastic news and it’s the future. Montclair will see a huge up tick in investment, quality of life, boom in property prices and other districts in NJ will want some of that - it’s happened in other US cities.