Volunteers keep the Montour Trail humming

While biking or walking along the Montour Trail that curls around the southwestern suburbs of Pittsburgh, one would barely notice crossing from one municipality into another.

Mark Marietta
Runners in the 10K race on April 22 pass each other on the Montour Trail in Cecil. The race began and ended at the access path in Cecil Township Park, taking runners through the national tunnel on the trail.
Besides mile-markers and the occasional sign welcoming users to a new township along the trail, the crushed limestone surface and neatly trimmed grass along the sides are mostly uniform along the 46-mile rail-trail.
That’s because the seven separate “friends” groups that maintain the trail have an army of volunteers who make sure the estimated 400,000 users a year have a clean and safe place to exercise.
Those friends groups are like the spokes in the Montour Trail Council’s bike wheel that have kept the trail humming for nearly three decades.
“It takes a lot to do that. All those sections are different, but they’re part of a larger whole,” says Ned Williams, vice president of the Montour Trail Council that is the hub in which the friends groups orbit around. “They’re all trying to get a good experience of the user. The friends groups are a big key because they handle everything on the ground and work with the municipalities.”

Mike Jones
Mike Jones
On a warm Saturday morning in mid-April, several volunteers from the Bethel Friends of the Trail were out clearing fallen trees and brush from a 2-mile section of the trail’s Bethel Branch that extends into Allegheny County. Bethel Friends president Peter Kohnke and Joe Lodge of Bethel Park were disposing of twigs and branches that scattered across the trail during the winter. Lodge began volunteering a few years ago after his father, Joe Sr., had been working with the group for decades.
“It’s great,” Lodge Jr. says. “When my kids get older, I’ll have them help out.”
All of the volunteers wear bright orange and yellow shirts, and their vehicles are emblazoned with official “Montour Trail” magnets so bikers and joggers would steer clear of the teams while they loaded 42 buckets of debris and removed two fallen tree trunks.
“It’s just great to see people use it,” Lodge Sr. says while numerous people zoom by on bikes or with strollers and dogs. “We love it and use it.”

Mike Jones
Mike Jones
Kohnke says while the seven friends groups are governed by different boards, they all work through the Montour Trail Council and have the same goal in mind: To keep the trail in pristine condition.
“The friends groups are all different with different personalities and enthusiasm levels. We’re very active,” he says. “We don’t report to neighboring groups and they don’t report to us. But that doesn’t mean we can’t contact each other to offer help.”
More than three decades ago, no one was quite sure how to re-purpose the abandoned Montour Railroad that delivered coal from the hills in southwestern Pennsylvania to steel mills and coke plants from Coraopolis to Clairton.

Mark Marietta
Runners in the second half of the 10K race exit the west end of the National Tunnel on the Montour Trail in Cecil on April 22. The race began at Cecil Township Park, taking runners through the tunnel and back.
Dennis Simms, a South Fayette resident and president of the Cecil Friends group, was part of the original council that formed in November 1989 to transform the former railroad into a usable recreation trail for the public. Over the next three years, the council organized its plans, raised money and secured the rights-of-way from the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad that owned the section in Washington County, while also working with officials Allegheny County, which owned the South Hills and airport branches. By 1992, the section in Cecil Township and several other communities were ready, but not all of them were connected.
The most important part, Simms says, was making people aware of the trail and why it was important for the community. All seven friends groups – South Hills, Bethel, Peters, Arrowhead, Cecil, Fort Cherry and Airport Area – now work closely with their own municipalities to find grants or promote local fundraising events.

Mark Marietta
Runners take off from the start of the 5K race on the Montour Trail in Cecil on April 22. The 5K race, 10K race, and 2K fun walk started from the access path in Cecil Township Park.
“As each section of the rail was complete, a group was formed to manage that section, publicize it,” Simms says. “We were the guinea pigs to become the friends group. Each group is independent, but there are times when something big happens we can call on our neighbor friends for help.”
Over the past two decades, all of the groups have been focusing heavily on raising money to build bridges so users can continue on the trail unabated by traffic. Millions of dollars have been spent on these spectacular spans that make Montour safer and more enjoyable, along with connecting the individual sections into a continuous trail.
“Once we got the sections connected and bridges put in, it just opened it up for everyone,” Simms says. “It’s just exploded over the past few years. Riders are coming in from all over. They’re thrilled about it.”
Those bridges aren’t cheap or easy to build. Cecil’s friends recently built their final bridge at Route 50/980 near Southview, a 400-foot span over the most dangerous intersections on the trail. And it cost the Montour Trail Council about $2.5 million to rebuild the South Park viaduct over Route 88 with the help of state, federal and private funding, according to Williams.
Now that most of the bridges are completed, the friends can focus on maintenance, just like those volunteers from Bethel were doing recently.
“It takes a lot of cooperation and learning how to be at the right place at the right time,” Williams said.

Mark Marietta
Mark Marietta
Runners assemble at the top of the access path in Cecil Township Park, anticipating the start of the 5K race on the Montour Trail on April 22. More than 250 participated in the 5K race, the 10K race, and the 2K fun walk.