Rep. Keith McCall, Pennsylvania House Speaker (D-Carbon), will provide keynote remarks at the dedication of the D&L Trail’s Weissport Trailhead on June 12. The dedication will take place near the intersection of Canal and Bridge streets in Weissport at 10 a.m.  Rep. McCall has led the effort to build and improve the D&L Trail along the Lehigh Canal in Carbon County and was integral in acquiring funding for the many improvements in the trailhead’s new design.

The ceremony also will include the dedication of a flowering dogwood tree and marker as a memorial to Wilbur “Cap” Bauchspies, a longtime friend of the Lehigh Canal, volunteer, and President of the Lehigh Canal and Recreation Commission. Mr. Bauchspies passed away earlier this month.

A tour of 2.5 newly resurfaced miles of the D&L Trail will be held following the dedication. Interested people should bring a bicycle or walking shoes. Light refreshments will be served.

For more information, contact Sandy Duda at 610-377-4063 or sandy@delawareandlehigh.org.

One of Bethlehem‘s oldest treasures will have a long overdue day in the spotlight on June 6.

The Lehigh Canal towpath, a National Recreation Trail known officially as the D&L Trail, will host a new National Trails Day event called “Travel the Towpath,” a celebration of the trail’s history, ecology and health and recreation opportunities.

Sponsored by the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor, the event will take place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. along two miles of the towpath from West Sand Island to Canal Lock 43 east of the Minsi Trail Bridge. Activities and exhibits will be provided by local, state and federal agencies, non-profit organizations, businesses and individuals.

“We’re happy the towpath is getting some notoriety,” said D&L Outreach Coordinator, Dennis Scholl, who manages a group of volunteers – the Trail Tenders – who maintain and enhance the 180-year-old towpath. “We’re confident the canal area can become one of Bethlehem’s most relaxing and healthful parks if people learn how to use and appreciate it.”

Smokey the Bear will be among the cast of characters traveling the towpath on National Trails Day, a celebration of America’s trails held across the United States every year on the first Saturday in June. The friendly U.S. Forest Service icon will be greeting people and reminding young and old alike that “Only you can prevent forest fires.”

Other program participants include: the National Park Service; Wildlands Conservancy; Saucon Valley Bikes; Steel Fitness of Bethlehem; Segway of the Lehigh Valley; the Bethlehem Health Bureau; Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission; Lehigh Valley Greenways; Jacobsburg Environmental Center; South Bethlehem Historical Society; Touchstone Theater of Bethlehem; Steelworkers’ Archives; First State Greyhound Rescue; Allentown Hiking Club; photographers Michael Shaw and Gordon Perry; and canal artist Jean Perry.

The Wildlands Conservancy will offer a special Bike ‘n Boat program for the first 30 people who pre-register. The Conservancy will provide bicycles for participants to travel the towpath from West Sand Island to Canal Park in Allentown, where they will trade in the bikes for canoes and an interpretive trip down the Lehigh River to West Sand Island. The program will begin shortly after 10 a.m. Reservations can be made by calling the D&L at 610-923-3548, ext. 221.

Another event highlight is the dedication of the Sand Island Native Plant Preserve at 10:30 a.m. Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan will help dedicate the 600-foot plant restoration site created by the Trail Tenders over the past two years. Located at the confluence of Monocacy Creek and the Lehigh River, the preserve was occupied for many years by invasive plants that compromised the site’s ecology. The Trail Tenders removed more than one acre of invasives by hand and replaced them with more than 30 species of natives grasses, flowers, shrubs and trees last fall. In time the preserve will become a nursery for seeds and young plants that will be used elsewhere along the D&L Trail.

The D&L and the Trail Tenders will be on hand to explain their work along the trail and also present the towpath’s top 10 history stories. Touchstone Theater will provide readings for children from the new storybook “Tales of the Towpath,” a D&L publication about a boy’s travels and adventures along the Lehigh and Delaware canals in 1855. The storybook generated a local history curriculum that will be used by the Bethlehem Area School District and nine other districts in the 2009-2010 school year.

The Delaware & Lehigh National and State Heritage Corridor fosters stewardship of historical, cultural and natural resources along the early canal and railroad systems that carried anthracite coal from mine to market in eastern Pennsylvania. For more information go to www.delawareandlehigh.org, call 610-923-3548 x225, or e-mail info@delawareandlehigh.org.

For a copy of the entire press release, click here.

Last night, new urbanist designer and planner Jeff Speck made public the results of his long-awaited report on the walkability of Bethlehem.  A group of nearly 100 residents came out to Lehigh University’s Zoellner Arts Center to watch the two-hour long, engaging presentation.  Since 2004, Mayor Callahan has worked with Speck at the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, a forum designed to promote the ideals of new urbanism to the leaders of American cities. This relationship led to the City of Bethlehem’s hiring of Speck to determine the strengths and weaknesses of Bethlehem’s pedestrian infrastructure. Speck, a co-author of the groundbreaking “bible” of new urbanism, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, spent four days touring Bethlehem with Darlene Heller of the city’s planning department.  This meeting was intended to serve as a preview of Speck’s more detailed published report, due to the city in the next few weeks.

Within the first few minutes of the presentation, it became clear that Speck’s conception of walkability extends to the entire physical and social environment of the city. Everything from street widths to building heights and trees to graffiti were analyzed to determine how a pedestrian would react to the street. Speck assigned each street a ranking, which he used to create plans for future strategic development.  Streets with vacant store fronts, expansive parking lots, and fast moving traffic scored low points, while those with a variety of businesses and a feeling of enclosure and safety scored the highest.  The results of the study were actually quite promising. In contrast to many American cities, Bethlehem has a relatively high level of walkability, promoted in part by the availability of downtown residences.

Surprisingly, Speck suggested leaving the very worst areas–South Bethlehem’s Five Points, for example–out of short-term planning because they will require too much investment in street reconfiguration and economic development. In contrast, the city could immediately install relatively cheap speed bumps and stop signs at specific sites to see vast improvements. Many of the city’s problems with speeding and unwelcoming streetscapes are the result of improper street widths, exceedingly long turning lanes, and overzealous parking restrictions. Fortunately, the majority of those problems can be solved with a little planning and some street paint.

The long list of recommendations, some of which would cost millions of dollars, compelled one resident to ask Speck what the first project should be. Speck did not hesitate for a moment, before suggesting that altering the car-dominant entrance and exit patterns on each end of the Fahy Bridge would do more than anything else to improve the pedestrian connectivity between North and South Bethlehem. This comment was met with warm applause from an audience that appeared to welcome the majority of Speck’s proposals. Yet, despite their overall enthusiasm, residents were justifiably skeptical of the city’s financial and political will to implement many of the proposals. Indeed, as Speck spoke to the eager crowd about narrow-width streets and emphasized human-scale streetscapes, a few blocks away the casino-mandated widening of Rt. 412 continued.  Still, last night was–pardon the pun–a step in the right direction…

[Look for Speck's full report to be posted to the City of Bethlehem's website within the month.]