Planners at last Tuesday’s riverfront planning meeting were asked where the East Coast Greenway would be crossing the James River. According to their answer, the ECG’s route will come through downtown but then jog westward along the Canal Walk and come to the Lee Bridge.

Here’s an excerpt from a recent Treehugger.com post about this exciting bike trail development:

If you think highways and flight paths are the only ways to travel long distances in the United States, check out the East Coast Greenway. The network of bike trails and bikeable roads stretches nearly 3,000 miles down the eastern seaboard, from Maine’s border with Canada to Key West, Florida.

In the works since 1991, the route is officially complete, but still very much a work in progress. The goal of the East Coast Greenway Alliance (ECGA) is to have it run entirely on dedicated traffic-free trails, but at this point, nearly three quarters is on regular, if calm, roads.

The ECGA does not create the trails itself, but rather works with local organizations and agencies in the fifteen states it traverses to bring route sections together and to ensure that they all meet the proper criteria. If you live on the East Coast or pass through for a visit, the ECGA provides maps and information for each state’s route.

While circuitous routes off-road trails are preferred to direct on-road ones, the Greenway remains an urban trail system. It is more concerned with transportation than recreation, and connects 25 major cities, including New York, Washington, D.C., Richmond, Raleigh, Charleston and Miami.