Today
Today, the Abandoned Turnpike, as it is commonly known, has become a popular tourist attraction. The PTC sold most of the property to the Southern Alleghenies Conservancy (SAC) for $1 in 2001. The property is managed by Friends of the Pike 2 Bike, a coalition of non-profit groups (including the SAC) to eventually convert the stretch into a bike trail. The property is officially closed to the public, and no motor vehicles are allowed on the property, but riders are free to use it at their own risk. The trail requires helmets and lights. Because this stretch sits on parts of the former right-of-way of the South Pennsylvania Railroad that was never completed but later formed the basis of the mainline turnpike, this makes the Pike2Bike unofficially a rail trail. The PTC still owns a stretch of about 0.25 miles (0.40 km) on the west and 3.5 miles (5.6 km) on the east for maintenance purposes.
The entranceways to the tunnels were in respectable shape through the early 1980s, when vandalism and time began to take their toll; thieves stole even the lettering of the signs of the tunnels sometime between 1981 and 1999. The tunnels themselves are still standing and, despite not having been maintained for decades, are still structurally sound.
A business plan and feasibility study was completed by Gannett Flemming in 2005. It proposed various ideas to make the trail as accessible as possible for cyclists, hikers, roller bladers, and equestrians.
As of November 2007, the trail is in the process of changing ownership to Bedford County. This is in response to the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources' need for a governmental body to own the trail before it can give out grants. The Friends of the Pike 2 Bike will continue to run and oversee the trail.
Read more about this topic: Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike
Famous quotes containing the word today:
““I’m very brave generally,” he went on in a low voice: “only today I happen to have a headache.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“To the degree that respect for professors ... has risen in our society, respect for writers has fallen. Today the professorial intellect has achieved its highest public standing since the world began, while writers have come to be called “men of letters,” by which is meant people who are prevented by some obscure infirmity from becoming competent journalists.”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)
“We have today and I could call their name
Who know exactly what is out of joint
To make their verse and their excuses lame.
They’ve tried to grasp with too much social fact
Too large a situation.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)