Commissioners receive draft of trails, greenways plan

A vast network of trails could one day criss-cross Johnston County.

A vast network of trails could one day connect Johnston County residents to parks, nature preserves, downtown shops and restaurants, even neighboring counties.

The network would be a huge — and costly — undertaking. But Johnston is laying the groundwork with a Comprehensive Trails and Greenways Plan.

With the arrival of Adrian O’Neal as parks and open space director, Johnston has upped its commitment to public trails and greenways, now limited to the towns of Clayton and Smithfield.

“I think this is the next step in that evolution,” Commissioner Butch Lawter said of a comprehensive trails plan, the draft of which Commissioners received on Dec. 1.

The plan, which a consulting firm wrote with community input, calls for trails and greenways linking every corner of the County. It wouldn’t be cheap — an estimated $409 million, and that doesn’t include land costs.

But not all of that money would have to come from Johnston taxpayers, Lawter said. “There is funding available,” he said, pointing to state and federal dollars set aside specifically for trails and greenways.

Those dollars, Lawter noted, are contingent on Johnston adopting a trails and greenways plan. “Then going forward, we can make sure we do look for funding from the DOT to get some of these built,” he said, adding, “I think we’ll be successful.”

He noted too that the N.C. Department of Transportation would likely fund some trails — such as those proposed along Cleveland Road and Veterans Parkway — as part of upgrades to those roads. “So I think there’s funding there, and now we’ll have the tool to go after that,” Lawter said.

Commissioner Patrick Harris, the board’s new chairman, agreed. “I think it’s safe to assume that if we don’t have the road map, then it doesn’t open up the opportunities to bring in funding from outside sources,” he said.

Joel Strickland is a transportation planner with McAdams, the engineering firm that helped write the trails plan. “The County’s come a long way with the network that you do have,” he told commissioners. “Your parks and rec staff have done a great job proposing greenways and trails within the county.”

The comprehensive plan puts those trails and others to paper. “We wanted to support and prioritize projects that were really feasible and had community support,” Strickland said.

That’s why the plan connects towns — Selma to Pine Level, for example — and carries Johnstonians to destinations, including Johnston County Regional Park and Flower Hill Nature Preserve.

“That was something we really looked at when we did the recommendations,” Strickland said. “We looked at key destinations within the county and tried to make sure that … we made those connections so that people would be more apt to use the greenways.”

With connections to destinations, the trail network would be a viable transportation option, Strickland said. “One of the goals is that this network would be so elaborate that it would be a true alternative to someone’s car,” he said.

County Commissioners could adopt the trails plan as soon as next month.