Ed. — Archived from the Sunday, Dec. 1, print edition.
VIRGINIA BEACH — Not long before Thanksgiving, Virginia Beach dedicated the new Foxfire Trail, a piece of a larger effort to connect communities within the commonwealth’s most populous city.
The paved, one-mile trail links Foxfire Park on the north side of Heron Ridge Golf Club and the West Neck Creek Natural Area on the southeast side of the municipal center area. The path follows a historic railroad corridor and includes a bridge over West Neck Creek that was designed with clearance for kayaks and canoes to pass underneath.
“I’ve always believed there is a wonderful quality of life here in our city that can’t be equaled in most cities,” Mayor Bobby Dyer said during the event on Friday, Nov. 22.
He noted Virginia Beach’s 300 miles of bikeways and trails and 79 miles of scenic waterways during his remarks.
“The Foxfire Trail gets us one step closer to our goal of having parks within a 10-minute walk of every neighborhood in our city,” he said.
City Council Member Barbara Henley of District 2, Parks & Recreation Director Michael Kirschman and Walter Camp, chairperson of the city’s Active Transportation Advisory Committee, also spoke at the event on the park-end of the trail — and while the trail itself was busy even before anyone cut a ceremonial ribbon.
“It was a lovely morning,” Camp said afterward. “You couldn’t have staged it better. As we were sitting there doing the little ceremonial thing, here come people just walking their dogs and riding their bikes and doing what you do on trails — just the private citizens out already using the trail, babies on bike carriers and everybody else. It was just great.”
The Active Transportation Advisory Committee was instrumental in securing a grant from the Virginia Department of Transportation to help fund construction of the trail. A second grant is being used to build a shared-use path between Three Oaks Elementary School and the Highgate Green and Sherwood Lakes neighborhoods. It is scheduled to open in 2025.
Steve Lambert, an active transportation planner who is working on the Three Oaks Path, praised Camp and the Active Transportation Advisory Committee for their persistence in getting the projects funded.
“We probably would have never even had it requested for funding if it wasn’t for citizens in this area that were part of our advisory committee requesting it,” he said. “A lot of our active transportation plan that we do have, we got engagement from the citizens to request these trails across the city, and that’s how we look for funding for them. It’s as big as getting a trail built to sometimes as little as just putting in a bike rack.”
The forthcoming Three Oaks Path may be short, but Lambert said its impact will be huge.
“It’s pretty neat,” he said, “that we get to give kids and families the opportunity to be able to bike and walk — not just to the school, but make it easier for them to get to shopping destinations.”
Camp echoed that sentiment, noting that the trails are more than just recreational amenities.
“Even this morning,” he said after the ceremony, “we watched a person commuting to work who couldn’t commute to work prior to this trail.”
Some use paths by necessity, in addition to those who are there to recreate. That’s part of the city’s thinking, he said.
“We forget that walking, jogging and biking are part of our transportation system,” Henley said during her remarks.
“You could have a $10 pair of shoes or a $10,000 bike,” Camp said. “You’re still going to value what that trail allows you to do.”
© 2024 Pungo Publishing Co., LLC
