Camden County has plans for 2 trail bridges that will connect Philly to Cooper River Park and beyond
When complete, the two bridges will give say, a cyclist coming from Philly, and someone walking from Camden, unimpeded access to the Cooper River system without crossing a major road.
Camden County is moving quickly to build one of two bridges that will serve as key connectors to a 32-mile trail system that will start at the Ben Franklin Bridge and run the length of the county, eventually connecting with other trail systems that end at the Shore.
In the future, officials say, riders will be able to bike from Manayunk to Cape May and back.
Just the addition of these two Camden County bridges will give say, a cyclist coming from Philly and someone walking from Camden unimpeded access to the Cooper River system for the first time without having to cross major roadways.
“These bridges are critical components of the trail because without them, there is no continuous trail,” said Jeffrey Nash, a county commissioner and liaison to the parks department.
Although the complete linked trail is still years away, the county has $1 million in federal money and a design for a pedestrian/bicycle bridge that will cross the Cooper River in Camden at Flanders Boulevard, parallel to the Admiral Wilson Boulevard (Route 30), and adjacent to the Speedway gas station.
It will be near both Campbell Soup Co. headquarters and Subaru of America and give people direct access to Gateway Park, which runs parallels to the Admiral Wilson Boulevard.
Officials expect to start construction next summer and the bridge to open in the summer of 2024.
The county also has a $3.2 million federal grant to build a second bridge about 1.4 miles to the east, that will cross busy Route 130 in Camden at an existing county-operated golf driving range and connect to the extensive Cooper River Park system in Pennsauken. Designs are not complete for that second bridge, and it needs approval from the state’s Historic Preservation Office because it connects with the park, which was built in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration.
The bridges would serve as the start of the $52 million LINK Trail that would run from the base of the Ben Franklin Bridge near Rutgers to Winslow Township. Officials hope that, from there, it will dovetail into Gloucester County, then join unbroken trail systems for Atlantic and Cape May Counties, eventually ending in Cape May.
Jack Sworaski, a retired county environmental official who has been retained to work on the trail, said the LINK Trail would connect with the East Coast Greenway and Schuylkill River trails in Philadelphia.
The LINK Trail will end in Winslow Township near a state fish and wildlife area but will connect with a trail in Monroe Township, Gloucester County, and then with trails in Atlantic County, and eventually in Cape May County, he said. Not all of those trail segments are in place, but the counties are working together.
The vision remains that a solid trail network will be in place in future years that will run “about 110 miles from the base of the Ben Franklin Bridge to Cape May City,” Sworaski said.