GRAY – If recommendations of a plan recently released by the Gray Bicycle-Pedestrian Committee take shape, the town known as the Crossroads of Maine could have an integrated system of bike lanes and sidewalks connecting the more distant areas of town with the busy village center.

That’s the vision put forth in the newly released Gray Bicycle-Pedestrian Plan, completed by a group of eight bike-ped committee members who examined existing sidewalks and roadways and found many areas of town in need of better bicycle and pedestrian access.

The committee, which has met for more than a year, is led by Anne Gass, also the president of Gray Community Endowment, a nonprofit group that sponsors a wide range of community-minded projects and events. The committee surveyed the major roadways in town, documenting existing sidewalks and identifying those that are crumbling or too narrow. Mostly, they identified areas that need new or improved sidewalks, as well as sections of roads that need bike lanes.

“This is Gray’s first bike-pedestrian plan. So, this was an effort to identify both our assets and our gaps in offering safe bike and pedestrian access to people in Gray,” Gass said.

Gass said the committee had three goals. One was to identify a village-area loop trail that would help pedestrians and bikers circumnavigate the center of Gray without relying on congested roadways. That was accomplished by identifying potential cut-throughs on both public and private land. The private ways, some of which are already used, would need to be deeded by the landowner to the town before any public route is constructed.

The committee’s second goal was to identify ways to improve bicycle and pedestrian access in three key areas of Gray: the village area where routes 100, 26 and 115 come together; the area near the high school and new Hannaford on Route 26; and, finally, the Dry Mills area.

Since the village is a town center that sees extensive commercial and residential use, expanding the sidewalks and crosswalks lining the village’s roadways was described by the group as a major priority.

“There aren’t that many sidewalks in Gray Center,” Gass said. “We’d like to see some more of them. For example, right now there’s no sidewalk access in some key places like along Hancock Street where the library is. And also heading up Route 115 out of town, there’s no sidewalk after a certain point.”

The school complex on Libby Hill Road across from Hannaford was another target area for the committee, Gass said. The committee thought the lack of a sidewalk from the high school to the middle school was “ridiculous,” she said.

“There’s a nice sidewalk in from Route 26 to the high school, but there’s no sidewalk from the high school to the middle school. So you either have to walk on the road or in a parking lot, and that seems unsafe to us,” Gass added.

A bike lane along Route 26 near the school was identified as another need, she said. The group based that on an online survey last year that received 80 responses from residents.

“What we found when we did the survey was a lot of parents who live within a mile of the school, they told us they’d like to have their kids walk or ride a bike to school but they just don’t feel safe because the roadways aren’t striped and there are a lack of sidewalks. So improving accessibility for bikers and pedestrians would be appropriate to do,” Gass said,

Gass said the third identified area, Dry Mills, where Route 26 intersects with North Raymond Road, is “such a very difficult area in terms of traffic right now,” she said. “And of course there is a lot of pedestrian use along North Raymond Road because of Wilkies Beach. And a lot of people use Mayberry Road around Crystal Lake to walk year-round.”

Payment options

While there are no immediate prospects of incorporating the committee’s recommendations, which first need to be adopted by the Gray Town Council, Gray is already ahead of many area towns simply by having a bike-ped plan in place.

Completing a plan is an important step in terms of getting funding to pay for any future upgrades, said Stephanie Carver, a land-use and transportation planner with Greater Portland Council of Governments, who worked with the committee to draft the plan. Carver, who has worked with Bridgton to develop sidewalks that are now under construction, said potential state and federal funding sources, such as the Maine Department of Transportation and federal agencies, require towns to show they have a plan with the community’s backing before they will award money for a project.

“So you really need to be ready to go so as opportunities present themselves, you’re ready to apply for funding,” Carver said.

Government funding isn’t the only chance of making the bike-ped plan a reality. As private developers eye certain sections of town listed in the plan, the recommendations proposed by the committee can be incorporated into the developer’s plans, Carver said. And as development takes place over time, eventually a network of safer travel routes would be established, she said.

While Gray’s plan is comprehensive in scope and aims to link the corners of town with the centralized village, roadways won’t be restriped with designated bike lanes and new sidewalks won’t appear overnight just because there’s a bike-ped plan. It’ll take time, Gass said. But when the town or state prepares to reconstruct a roadway, the bike-ped recommendations can be incorporated at that time, she said.

“By its very nature, this effort is opportunistic. We wouldn’t expect to see the town to go ahead and build a sidewalk on Route 26 right now because there’s a lot of planning around that,” Gass said. “But once the town is engaged in redoing a roadway, we would hope to see that the town would adopt the recommendations from the plan and ensure there were appropriate bike and pedestrian access.”

Dean Bennett, director of Gray Recreation, was a member of the committee and says it goes far in promoting a more bikeable and walkable town center.

“From my perspective as the rec director, the little village of Gray here is starting to blossom pretty much like a flower. It’s starting to open up now. And the bike path will do a nice job when we finally get it implemented to connect the four corners of Gray. And that’s the biggest issue now is how can we get bikers or walkers from one section of town to another safely,” he said.

One of Gray’s best-known pedestrians, former state Rep. Sue Austin, who has walked Route 115 almost daily for about 15 years, says Gray’s roadways have much room for improvement.

“Safety is the core of our work,” the Gray native said. “We’ve missed opportunities in the past when they were putting in new bridges or new lanes and we didn’t take the opportunity to put in a new bike path or sidewalk. So, if we’re ready and have that information ready to roll, when they’re ready for a project, the plan is in place.”

Gray’s economic development director, Beth Humphrey, is also a fan of the plan. She said she and town planners are working on several plans regarding how to better develop various areas of downtown and that the bike-ped recommendations are especially key to a better functioning downtown.

“The bike-ped plan is actually one of many studies that have been going on simultaneously, not only in the village but the town, as well. So we have these individual studies, but to see how they all blend and mold together to provide the big picture of what we want our community to look like is important, and the bike-ped plan is integral to that,” Humphrey said. “And when you look at many successful communities or revitalized downtowns, you always find that bike-ped component, so it’s really important for our community, which has so much traffic going through downtown.”

Now that the plan has come out of committee and awaits review by the council, Gass said the next steps are to receive public input, possibly at a public hearing to be held in the near future. The bike-ped committee will also meet with the Gray Planning Board and Recreation Committee to see if members have any questions and concerns, with the last step being adoption by the council, which will feature further opportunity for public comment.

While not technically a part of Gray’s Bike-Pedestrian Plan, committee members, from left, Sue Austin, Anne Gass, Dean Bennett and Shad Hall, think the new crosswalk in front of Pennell Municipal Complex is a good example of what can be done to make the town safer and easier to navigate. The committee recently released a list of recommendations to improve bike-ped safety.Members of the Gray Bicycle-Pedestrian Committee pose with a site map showing planned improvements to the newly acquired parcel of town land behind them.Gray Director of Parks and Recreation Dean Bennett is a proponent of a better plan in Gray for bicyclists and pedestrians. He envisions a system of paths linking the four corners of Gray with downtown.Sue Austin, the former state representative for Gray, is a member of the bicycle-pedestrian committee, and one of Gray’s most well-known pedestrians. She can be seen almost daily walking Route 115 near her home.Anne Gass served as chairwoman of the Gray Bicycle-Pedestrian Committee that recently submitted a report outlining ways to improve safety along Gray’s roads for walkers and bicyclists.