Winston-Salem readies extension of Long Branch Trail north of the Innovation Quarter (2024)

Bike riders, walkers and runners will have more options in Winston-Salem with the construction of a 1.3-mile extension to Long Branch Trail from the Innovation Quarter to 25th Street, city officials say.

The Winston-Salem City Council is expected in September to approve a $1 million agreement with an engineering company for the design work and other tasks associated with building the trail extension.

Kimley-Horn and Associates Inc., based in Raleigh, is the company the city has chosen for this first phase of work. Although the company was the only one to submit a proposal for the work, city officials said it was fully qualified to do the job.

Currently, the north end of Long Branch Trail comes out on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive on the north side of the Innovation Quarter. The trail runs parallel beside unused railroad tracks as it makes its way through downtown. South of Third Street, the trail gradually approaches and runs beside Research Parkway.

A connection to Salem Creek Greenway from Research Parkway gives bikers and walkers a way to greatly extend their travels to the east, toward Salem Lake, or to Marketplace Mall and Peters Creek Parkway to the west.

As planned, the Long Branch Trail extension will proceed north on the west side of the unused railroad tracks, passing under Liberty Street via the bridge near Tucker’s Tap Yard.

Continuing north, the path will need to cross Northwest Boulevard by way of a newly-constructed bridge beside the existing railroad bridge. Jeff Fansler, the director of transportation for Winston-Salem, told members of the city council recently that the city hopes to be able to take advantage of the existing bridge abutments to build the additional bridge for Long Branch Trail.

The new path would next cross under the 16th Street bridge and would be on level ground when it reaches 24th and 25th streets.

Major funding for the project comes from a $6 million federal grant the city received in 2022 from a program called Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE). City officials said the money is being supplemented by additional state and local funds: $880,000 in other federal funds plus $1.7 million in local matching funds. The total project budget is $8.6 million.

The RAISE grants have a specific focus on improving transportation in areas of persistent poverty and which have been historically disadvantaged. Jeff MacIntosh, who chairs the city’s Public Works Committee, said that at the time he came onto the council in 2013, the city was being criticized for its lack of interconnected trails.

“This project just continues to stretch the boundaries of where downtown goes,” he said. “The inclusivity of what downtown now touches is just remarkable. This really just does push who gets to be in downtown and gets to participate in downtown.”

One of the biggest challenges, though, will be how to get bikers and walkers across King Drive safely. The street currently has stoplights at the Patterson Avenue and Research Parkway intersections, but none at the future crossing of the path.

Fansler said the funding for the project includes money to make that street crossing safe.

City officials said that when the work is finished on the Long Branch Trail extension, the section to the north of King Drive will have the same quality of appearance as the existing section, with lighting and landscaping.

Fansler said it should take less than a year for the design work to take place, with an expected groundbreaking in the fourth quarter of 2025. Construction will last about a year, with completion scheduled by the end of 2026.

One thing council members wanted to know when the project was recently discussed is whether there are prospects for a further extension of the trail to the north of 25th Street, but the answer was not a clear-cut one. The rail line beside which the trail is being built is owned by the North Carolina Railroad and agreements are in place with the railroad for the greenway extension.

North of 25th Street, the rail line is a Norfolk Southern line, which would require separate negotiations. At the same time, city officials say nothing about whether the trail extension will threaten any possibility of bringing back passenger rail service to the city.