The Empire State Trail: Building an Impossible Idea
December 31, 2020 marked the completion of New York’s Empire State Trail (EST), a continuous 750-mile pedestrian and cycling route spanning the state from New York City to Canada and Buffalo to Albany, creating the longest multi-use state trail in the nation.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed the Empire State Trail in January 2017 to promote outdoor recreation, encourage healthy lifestyles, support community vitality, and increase tourism and economic development. This signature trail now connects New York’s unique places, diverse history, and iconic landscapes, including 135 urban centers and 45 village main streets from New York City through the Hudson River Valley, west to Buffalo along the Erie Canal, and north to the Champlain Valley and Adirondacks. Alta’s trail user estimate predicted that nearly nine million people will visit the trail each year.
What once seemed like an impossible idea, the Empire State Trail was completed in just four years and involved an enormous amount of support from a variety of state agencies and public partners, consultants across the state, and Alta’s own team of professionals.
The trail presented many design challenges for the team to solve. Roughly 400 miles of the trail existed in discrete, disconnected segments, and the team constructed or improved an additional 350 miles of trail through 58 different construction projects to connect all 750 miles of trail. Wherever possible, the trail is “off-road,” utilizing historic railway routes (e.g., rail-trails) and canal tow paths along sections of the Erie and Champlain canals. For the 550 miles from Manhattan to Buffalo, 85 percent of the Empire State Trail is off-road.
Prior to the Empire State Trail initiative, the Erie Canalway Trail had progressed but the most challenging portions remained incomplete. This included a 14-mile gap through the Syracuse area where railroads, highways, and Erie Boulevard had been built in place of the old Erie Canal. The trail in Rotterdam dead-ended at railroad tracks for years, leaving trail users to turn around or scramble an embankment and weave through waiting train cars. The Hudson River Valley Greenway still remained only 50 percent complete. What remained were several long and complex trail projects, still at the feasibility stage. These projects also required unique partnerships with utilities and railroads.
From design and logistic challenges to the number of coordinating entities, many wondered how a project of this scale would be completed on time, especially when there was no user manual. No other state had completed a trail of this magnitude.
The Big Idea
Alta began working on the Empire State Trail before it had the name. The team had been working with the Hudson River Valley Greenway (HRVG), a state entity, to develop a plan to complete a greenway along the Hudson River (2016). Due to the active railroads along both shores of the river, a shared use path along the river, as originally envisioned, was infeasible. Alta’s approach was a plan to connect all of the existing shared use paths within the valley.
This short-term alignment crossed the Hudson River in several locations and was nearly 50 percent complete. At the same time this study was concluding, the Erie Canal Trail was approaching its bicentennial celebration and there were many people and organizations advocating for funds to complete the trail. By combining the two corridors, and planning an extension, north from Albany to the Canadian border, this quickly became a statewide initiative and gained the full support and ownership of Governor Cuomo. He announced the “Empire State Trail” in his 2017 State of the State address. A 2020 completion date was set, and the work continued.
Alta’s Involvement in this Signature Trail
There was no time to waste. Alta hit the ground running with the remaining planning efforts, producing the design guide, master plan, and the conceptual plans for the Albany Hudson Electric Trail, Maybrook Trail, and NYSDOT on-road connections, all within a year and in close collaboration with HRVG, NYSDOT, Metro-North Railroad, and others. The team has helped coordinate with the state agencies, manage the budget, and create and review design plans for the trail projects.
“It has been exciting to work on such a diverse project, when every week brings something new,” said Alta’s Project Manager Lindsay Zefting. “One week could be co-branding plans and signage plans, and the next could be intersection design and doing trail user estimates. We have enjoyed working with the Hudson River Valley Greenway and other EST partners to solve problems as they arise and provide technical expertise.”
Wayfinding and Access
Special attention was placed on making sure the Empire State Trail was cohesive throughout the state while also paying homage to the communities it connected. For much of its route, the Empire State Trail is an overlay integrating local and regional trails. Local trails have retained their local name and identity, co-branded with the Empire State Trail wayfinding to provide cohesion and increase public visitation.
Gateways and trailheads are highly visible trail entrances, often near city and village centers that advertise and promote the trail as well as nearby businesses and attractions. Alta’s team designed 32 trailheads and access points along the Empire State Trail and, through the design guide and our role as the “technical consultant” to the state, oversaw and reviewed plans for dozens of trailhead plans developed by various state agencies or their design consultants.
Alta’s environmental graphics experts designed and coordinated information panels for over 45 trailheads and gateways and 23 historic interpretation signs for the Albany Hudson Electric Trail and Maybrook Trailway. Members of Alta’s Troy office, graphic designers, planners, copyeditors and fact-checkers, and a New York-based historian collaborated to develop the interpretive signs and select historic images.
It Takes a Village
The magnitude of the Empire State Trail isn’t just in its unprecedented 750-mile length. The project required an enormous amount of teamwork and communication not often seen at this scale. Alta, in collaboration with several state entities — the Hudson River Valley Greenway, NYS Canal Corporation, NYS Department of Transportation, New York State Parks, Metro-North Railroad, and the Governor’s Office on the Empire State Trail initiative — coordinated with local officials, and involved agencies, bicycle and trails groups, transportation planning organizations, and interested members of the public to undertake conceptual planning, detailed engineering and construction for each project.
The team developed an innovative plan to connect several trails including the Erie Canalway Trail, Hudson River Valley Greenway, and Champlain Canalway Trail by the end of 2020. This was funded by a single $200 million-dollar state investment, which is incredibly unique for trail projects. The project also benefited from an additional $93 million in federal, state, local, and private funding.
“Ultimately, getting to where we are today would not have been possible without the Governor’s vision and support,” said Zefting. “It’s one thing to state support for a specific effort, but it’s another to provide funding, resources, and a team of leaders who are effective decision-makers allowing the planning and implementation process to proceed at a record rate.”
In addition to the project team, grassroot support groups such as the Columbia Friends of the Albany-Hudson Electric Trail (CFET), were formed during the detailed design process. These not-for-profit agencies grew out of public support and a desire to maintain what New York State is building. Groups like these help protect the investment in the trail system and foster project champions that will remain long after the excitement of design and construction is complete.
What’s Next for the Trail?
The Empire State Trail will be the “trunk” of an ever branching tree of trails connecting local communities to the long-distance active transportation network. In many ways, the trail is creating a new kind of urban form, and a new landscape that connects people and nature. Since trails are sustainable, the network is expected to grow to rival the railroads, canals and interstate highways. This project will serve as a blueprint for other statewide trails and as an example in collaboration between branches of government, non-profits, and community activists and supporters.
“We hope that this will prove that trails are a vital investment,” said Jeff Olson, who served as Principal-in-Charge of this project. “I want to look back 10 years from now and see major greenway projects like this happening all around the world, and at a scale that matches the urgency to address major issues of climate change, public health, economic development, and quality of life.”
Learn more about the Empire State Trail here, and about Alta’s other signature trails projects.
