WESTFIELD – When Heather Brunt of Kittredge Drive and Pam Perreault of Barbara Street realized that a feasibility study had identified their neighborhood as the preferred route for the Columbia Greenway Rail Trail connector going north to Southampton Road, they started to organize to urge their neighbors to attend a public meeting about a feasibility study on the connector, taking place on Feb. 22.

The grant-funded study by Toole Design is looking at how to continue the Westfield section of the rail trail from Women’s Temperance Park, where it currently ends, to Southampton Road, where the state plans to install a multi-use trail as part of a future reconstruction of Routes 10 and 202. From there the trail would connect to a planned Southampton rail trail.

Three potential connector routes have been studied. Route A would connect Women’s Temperance Park to Montgomery Street, up to the high school, then from the Dog Bark to the Arm Brook Dam area, into the Kittredge Drive neighborhood, ending at the Westfield Intermediate School property on Southampton Road. This route was preferred by rail trail advocates and city officials because it seemed safer, avoided more traffic and was more scenic than the other two alternatives.

Route B, which follows the Pioneer Valley Railroad from Women’s Temperance Park to Southampton Road, had been abandoned due to opposition from the railroad. Route C, which would jog east from the park following Union Street to Springdale Road to Southampton Road, had been opposed by earlier participants in the meetings due to safety concerns, placing trail cyclists too close to heavy traffic on those roads.

Plans for all three routes are posted on the cityofwestfield.org under the Engineering Department, Active Projects, Feasibility Study Multi-Use Trail Connector, as part of the slideshow for the second meeting.

Brunt has lived in the Kittredge Drive neighborhood since 1971, growing up in her family’s home on Sunset Drive, then later buying a home on Kittredge. Perreault, on Barbara Street, is also a longtime resident, as are many of the residents in the neighborhood that was built in the 1970s.

Perreault said they learned about the plans by going to a meeting of the Friends of the Columbia Greenway Rail Trail at the Westfield Athenaeum, and were not happy.

“I caught on at that meeting that their only focal point of that meeting was our neighborhood,” Perreault said, adding that she soon realized “this is happening unless we squawk.”

Brunt made phone calls to the city Engineering Department and spoke to Utility Engineer Matthew Gamelli.

“I am not a troublemaker, but I will make noise,” she said.

The pair and another neighbor printed up a flier and started to pound the pavement, canvassing the neighborhood and asking them if they knew about the plans or the upcoming public meeting on Feb. 22. Brunt said most people did not know anything about the plans or the earlier meetings, and all 70 fliers about the meeting were given out.

They also contacted Ward 1 City Councilor Nicholas J. Morganelli Jr., who came and met with them and other neighbors.

“He did show up and was very receptive,” Brunt said. She said the night of the meeting, Morganelli also helped an elderly neighbor to access the Zoom call.

The result was dozens of people signing on to the call, and speaking out.

Perreault said at the Zoom meeting, she couldn’t help but notice there seemed to be some frustration from the proponents of the planned route towards the neighbors who were opposed. She said this isn’t a simple case of “not in my backyard.”

“Maybe it would help for the people who don’t live on the North Side of Westfield to understand that we feel like the industrialized dumping zone of Westfield, in an area that was zoned agricultural when most of us settled here. We are the ones who have endured the major influx of significant truck traffic and airport traffic, which results in us being subjected to significant exhaust and noise pollution. … We also unwittingly drank contaminated H2O for 30 years,” Perreault read from a statement she had prepared for the meeting.

“To get out of our neighborhoods onto Southampton Road is sometimes a death-defying feat due to the convoy of trucks. The specific neighborhood that the bike trail would go through is now getting a Dunkin’ Donuts that is allowing traffic on Sunset Drive, our primary exit site, which will bottleneck us even more. There are plans on the docket to create yet another distribution center for Target, bringing 1,000 more cars and trucks daily onto Southampton Road, as well as a plan for a large-scale truck stop right off the turnpike,” she said.

Brunt said she works at the Southampton Road Elementary School, and gives herself six minutes in the morning to try to make the left turn from Sunset Drive onto Southampton Road, before she turns right, crossing Southampton Road to turn around in the fire station driveway to get to her job.
Perreault and Brunt described their neighborhood as a horseshoe between Southampton Road and Arm Brook Dam, with no through streets. Perreault said it is not quiet, because of noise from the trucks, but it is relatively peaceful.

“What little we have left for quality of life is a relatively safe neighborhood. This proposed bike trail would completely disrupt that. This is not your typical bike/hike trail, with a separate trail with a big tree buffer zone that travels separate from the neighborhood. This trail literally goes through yards and directly onto our neighborhood street,” Perreault’s statement continued.

She also expressed concern that more dog walkers from the Dog Bark would walk on the trail to get to the new Dunkin’ Donuts.

“This would cause major disruption to our quiet neighborhood, with significant safety concerns,” she said, challenging the idea that there is less crime and an increase in property values when cyclists and others use neighborhood streets as opposed to a separated trail.

When asked during the meeting, City Engineer Mark Cressotti said in the urban center during its peak days, the rail trail in Westfield has 1,500 visitors a day.

Cressotti also said several times during the Feb. 22 meeting that the city will not pursue the route without public support.

“The city is not going to pursue a trail through the neighborhood until 50 percent of the neighborhood supports it. I appreciate and hear your concerns. We are going to continue to investigate,” he said during the meeting.

After the meeting, Morganelli said he had met with several residents of the area, all of whom were adamantly opposed to the trail using their street.

“They showed me where the trail is going to come between two houses,” he said, adding that it would take a 10-foot fence to keep cyclists from going right through a backyard, where it would exit onto a street that has cars parked on it.

“You can’t sacrifice people’s privacy, quality of life, their backyard and their front yard. … This is a drastic change to this neighborhood. Some of these people have lived there, and their parents lived there, their whole lives. They are well-vested in their neighborhoods,” Morganelli said, adding, “I just heard an outcry from these people to not bring it through Kittredge and Sunset. I’m in full support.”

Morganelli said he didn’t just get one phone call or email about this plan, but dozens, up to 50 people.

“The people have already spoken. They need to change their plans, go back to the drawing board. It’s obvious that 99 percent of the people don’t want this,” he said.