Black Diamond Trail Bridge completed, expansion progressing

ITHACA, NY — A pedestrian bridge connecting the Black Diamond Trail (BDT) and the Cherry Street Industrial Park area of ​​the City of Ithaca has been completed, bringing the plan to connect the trail from Taughannock Falls to Buttermilk Falls one step closer to completion.

The bridge connects the city’s West Hill to the Route 13 corridor, which is home to Wegmans and many retail stores. The new bridge is the only non-motorized crossing of the bay and saves pedestrians a 0.7-mile walk, according to a 2020 brochure about the project.

The bridge project is part of a 2014 Tompkins County Priority Trails Strategy. The trail strategy aims to connect the Dryden Rail Trail, South Hill Recreation Way Extension, BDT, Finger Lakes Trail and urban connector trails. Once connected, there will be over 120 miles of continuous trails in the county. According to the trail strategy document, 51 miles will be multi-use trails and 69 miles will be the pedestrian-only Finger Lakes Trail.

Mayor Robert Cantelmo presided over a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the completion of the bridge on Friday. City Director of Engineering Tim Logue and Bridge Engineer Addisu Gebre also spoke at the ceremony.

“It’s really wonderful that they’ve done this,” Cantelmo said at the event. “I really want to recognize the work that they’ve done.”

Fred Bonn, Finger Lakes regional director for the state Department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, attended the event and said he believes the bridge will prove to be an asset to the area.

“It’s a fantastic addition to the Black Diamond Trail, which is proving to be a really important backbone for the community,” Bonn said.

Logue said the completion of the bridge is a positive standalone project that will improve pedestrian transit routes, but noted that it is also just one link in the city and county’s strategic trail system. “As people travel back and forth between West Hill and the Southwest, this is going to be really great for pedestrians and cyclists from a pure traffic perspective, but it’s also a pretty important link in that broader trail system,” Logue said in an interview with The voice of Ithaca.

Ari Kissiloff, a professor at Ithaca College, has lived in Trumansburg for 20 years. He moderators a Facebook information page about the Black Diamond Trail and said he has been an advocate of the trail since its inception.

The 8.4-mile Black Diamond Trail made of stone dust from Taughannock to the Ithaca Children’s Garden was completed in 2016. The trail was named after the leading passenger line The Black Diamond Express that ran on the Lehigh Valley Railroad and carried passengers from New York City to Buffalo. The train operated from 1896 to 1959.

Kissiloff said he has watched the trail expand over the years and his family uses it to get to Ithaca.

“When (the BDT) opened, it was pretty amazing,” Kissiloff said. “After it was finished, my family and my kids, when they were younger, would ride their bikes to Ithaca because they couldn’t drive. So they could actually ride their bikes into town (…) to me, this new bridge is just the icing on the cake.”

Currently, the BDT extension to Buttermilk Falls State Park ends at the newly constructed bridge. Kissiloff said the next step should be a connector trail from the bridge to the city of Ithaca’s existing Gateway Trail. The Gateway Trail and the Kirby Edmonds Bridge over Route 13 connect the west side of the highway to Buttermilk Falls.

“(The new bridge) seems to me to have been a great decision,” Kissiloff said. “I think the only problem is they have to connect it to Home Depot (…) right now it’s kind of a bridge to nowhere until they build that connecting path.”

Logue said the city has a grant for the BDT connector trail and the project is underway. Estimated construction of the BDT connector trail is currently scheduled for 2025, he said.

“I recognize that the trail network represents a great opportunity for Ithaca as a larger region to provide active transportation and create places where people can walk and bike safely, including younger and older people, families (and) new people who are just starting to bike,” Logue said.

Other trail connections are also being planned. The City of Ithaca has acquired the last three private properties needed to connect Buttermilk Falls to Treman State Park in 2023.

Bonn said the Department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation is in the process of purchasing the land from the city to turn it into a state park. He said they are also applying for grants and doing initial planning and design for the trail section.

Connecting all of these trails is “part of the city’s larger sustainability goal of reducing single-vehicle use and giving people more alternatives to walking, biking, taking the bus, carpooling, etc. The trail systems are a really good start to that,” Logue said.