Last month, our Regional Advocacy Specialist, Alexis Hosea-Abbott hosted the Diamond Ride in West Concord. The goals of the ride were to check out the new section of the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail to where it intersects the Mass Central Rail Trail from West Concord and Sudbury, to network with other advocates, and learn about advocacy along the trail.

The Bruce Freeman Rail trail is about 20 miles in length and now connects to the Mass Central Rail Trail, which one day will go all 110 miles from Boston to Northampton (if we can finish the trail!)

We called this ride the Diamond Ride since in railroad parlance, a "diamond" refers to a crossing where two railroad tracks intersect at grade, forming a diamond shape. In Sudbury, this is the point where two lines cross, Mass Central Rail Trail meets the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail in Sudbury, the spot nicknamed “the Diamond.”

To learn about the trail and network with fellow advocates, the ride featured two advocates who have been working on the trail for decades, each providing a perspective on how local advocacy kept pushing on the ground in Sudbury to bring about this regional asset. Before we got on our bikes, Barbara Pike, a long term Board member of the Friends of the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail, discussed the decades of advocacy required to get the trail funded and organized. She explained the challenges getting approval for the construction and consistency along the trail.  Barbara was one of the original advocates of the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail and still remains active to this day. 

Later on in the ride, Nicole Freedman, the current President of NEMBA (New England Mountain Bike Association) met us at a rest stop along the route. We chatted about advocacy in our own areas and Nicole emphasized youth involvement, community engagement and forging new alliances. Nicole’s biggest piece of advice for current and future advocacy projects was to involve youth in your presentation. Having youth involved provides a variety of opportunities both for the young people to get involved in civic engagement and expands adults’ awareness of the needs of young people.

Thanks to Glenn Pransky the new President of the Mass Central Rail Trail Alliance for help organizing the ride and Barbara Pike and Nicole Freedman for stopping to chat with us!

If you want to check out this section of the trail yourself it’s accessible by train on the Fitchburg Commuter Rail Line and Concord has a bikeshare station in the adjacent parking lot for the summer! The new trail includes a number of bottle filling stations, shade and bathrooms near the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail parking lot.

To learn more about the construction of this section of the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail, visit the StreetsblogMass article on the subject.